Burt Shavitz, Jewish Burt’s Bees Founder, Dies at 80
Burt Shavtiz, founder of Burt’s Bees Image by Getty Images
Burt Shavitz, co-founder and namesake for natural care product company Burt’s Bees, has died, the company said on Sunday. He was 80.
Shavitz, a “a wild-bearded and free-spirited Maine man” and beekeeper, co-founded the company with artist Roxanne Quimby in 1984, the company said in a statement.
The pair started off making candles from beeswax before developing a few years later the lip balm that exploded the company’s popularity and remains its best selling product, it said.
“It is with broken hearts that we must convey the saddest news: Burt Shavitz, our co-founder and namesake, has left for greener fields and wilder woods,” the company said in a statement on Facebook.
A company spokeswoman told USA Today that Shavitz died of respiratory issues on Sunday surrounded by family and friends in Bangor, Maine.
The company was acquired by Clorox Co in 2007.
This video features the Jewish beekeeper Liane Newton in New York City.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Dive In
-
Fast Forward ADL upgrades 19 colleges’ antisemitism ‘grades,’ as some enact new policies
-
Fast Forward Brown U leaders praise Jewish life on campus as Trump expected to slash $500M
-
Fast Forward Senate rejects Bernie Sanders’ proposal to block some weapons sales to Israel
-
Fast Forward Sotheby’s to auction earliest known kiddush cup
Most Popular
- 1
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 2
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 3
Fast Forward Cory Booker proclaims, ‘Hineni’ — I am here — 19 hours into anti-Trump Senate speech
- 4
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
In Case You Missed It
-
Theater The ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ revival has us wondering — where are all the Jewish Shelley Levenes?
-
Books From an Italian Holocaust survivor, a Kafkaesque nightmare of imprisonment under fascism
-
Film & TV Why Robby said the Shema on ‘The Pitt’
-
Yiddish World Children taking part in a Seder while hiding from the Nazis
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.