Burt Shavitz, co-founder of Burt’s Bees, dies at 80

Shavitz was a U.S. Army veteran and a photojournalist in New York City in the 1960s (where he captured the decade’s key moments in the civil rights and environmental movements, beat poets and artists) before becoming a beekeeper who sold honey at a roadside stand in Maine. He was 80. She was a single mother and a back-to-the-lander who impressed Mr. Shavitz with her ingenuity and self-sufficiency.

The two started Burt’s Bees in 1984 after Quimby began fashioning Shavitz’s unused beeswax into candles.

Shavitz, who didn’t see much of his company’s multi-million dollar fortune, was working as a news photographer when he was captivated by a swarm of bees flying around a fence.

Quimby later went on to make more than $300 million after selling the company to Clorox, and she disputed that Shavitz had been treated unfairly in the ordeal.

The Post says the company was later sold to Clorox for nearly $1 billion in 2007. Burt moved back to Maine and the company continued to succeed.

“He lived a full life, the way he wanted to live it and his 80 years on this Earth were an uncommon blessing to us all”.

“As a beekeeper, he connected intimately with the bees, whose profound relationship to humans, our food and our environment is only now being more fully understood while in peril”, read a company statement.

Shavitz stumbled upon his first bees by accident, when he found them swarming around a fencepost. “I am deeply saddened”, Quimby told The Associated Press in an email Sunday. If Shavitz had held on to his part of the company, it would’ve been worth about $59 million, according to the Times.

In a story published last week, Emily Becker compiled “12 Things You Didn’t Know About Burt of Burt’s Bees“, including a few telling snippets About life before birds, bees and Quimby came along.

The company announced his death on its website, where it referred to Shavitz as a “free-spirited Maine man”. During an interview in 2014, Shavitz stated he was forced to leave the company because he had an affair with one of the employees. The reclusive ex- beekeeper was the subject of a documentary, Burt’s Buzz. In his later years, Shavitz enjoyed living off on acres of land in rural Maine inside a cluttered home that was once a turkey coop, with no running water and a wood stove for cooking.

“In the long run, I got the land, and land is everything”.