1910-1956 – Natural medicine Pioneers

1977 - A love story is beginning...

1982 – Arguing for an organic beekeeping

1990 – First Apitherapy preparations

1998 – National recognition and new challenges

2007 – Ballot-Flurin today: a new start in the respect of the first commitments

1910-1956 – Natural medicine Pioneers

Catherine Flurin is the heir of 3 family generations of humanist medical doctors ahead of their time. Her daddy, René Flurin, used to practise as an otorhinolaryngologist for 40 years in Cauterets, a little renowned town in the Pyrenees.

Now retired Dr Flurin, a visionary ahead of time, thought ahead the current fashionable gentle medecine, as he used to heal his patients along his carrier in accordance with the great naturalistic principles: - Your health is depending above all on yourselves; - Recommendation of remedies born of nature (waters, honey, feeding and healthy life), avoiding the antibiotics; - Vital need for health of planet and human beings to protect the environment.

1977 – A love story is beginning…

Catherine Flurin, at that time studying economics, is looking for a path in life, and belongs to the first green militants, for a parity between the Northern and Southern blocs. As she was 20 she decided to become a beekeeper, bewitched by the life of the bees, that she discovered during beekeeping courses in the Jardin du Luxembourg.
She enrolls in a beekeeping training center… and falls in love with Philippe Ballot who was at that time a young beekeeping teacher. The Master-to-be of the bees was already working towards developing the foundations of a revolutionary beekeeping method based on the language of the bees: l'Apiculture Douce^® (Gentle Beekeeping).

1982 – Arguing for an organic beekeeping

The young beekeeper couple buys a small property in ruins at the bottom of the Pyrenees on two hectares of hills. They together float the firm Ballot-Flurin Apiculteurs with just some hives and a great ambition: respecting the bees as a real little people which goes back 120 million year, understanding their secrete language and really collaborate with the hive so as it gives of its best: honey, propolis, Royal Jelly…
Concerned with concrete actions, they are among the first who argued for the practising of an organic beekeeping, with more respect of the bees and with no chemical additions, under the French official organic farming label, AB.

1990 – First Apithery preparations

With the passing years Catherine takes up with the family tradition again and feels the need of healing and taking part to the general well-being of the society: she then takes an interst in the apitherapy, an ancestral care method with noble ingredients from the hive, at that time rediscovered by the scientific and alternative circles.She carries out his own researches,and intensely trains herself at the same time to Apitherapy, in particular in Germany.
She then decides with her husband to make ready for use apitherapy preparations for a precursory and natural care enthusiastic public.They bring into line with current tastes the old ancestral knowledges, listed in the Flurin family for generations, with the firm belief that it is possible to create very efficient, not polluting preparations, improved by ages of practising and without the standard side effects of the chemical pharmacopoeia.
After numerous tests they develop a first series of care and beauty products coming frim the hive 100 % natural and organic certified.A shop, the Bees Pavilion, is created in Cauterets and finds a great regional success.

1998 – National recognition and new challenges

The preparations quality and authenticity are quickly noticed by the first national chains of dietÈtics and natural stores. To face the increase of the demand, without giving up quality and being obliged to delocalize, the small family firm decides to create its own interdependent system with small local beekeepers who are as well among the pioneers of the fair and interdependent trade.Low-tech home-made manufacturing methods, that do not denature the original apiary ingredients and avoid the use of synthetic chemlical processes, are being constantly developed.

2007 – Ballot-Flurin today:

A new start in the respect of the first commitments

The small owner-managed family firm is now made up of 18 persons. On the request of the customers, the range of preparations has been extended to cosmetics and well-being energetic Elixirs (Hive Elixirs).
Catherine and Philippe, now well surrounded with a small dynamic team, are going on building the future organic beekeeping through new fights: after they have been the first to get the Cosmébio Certification, Ballot-Flurin is arguing against the emergence of an industrial organic beekeeping, which pays no attention to the social part and leads to a standardisation of the crops and formulations.The local manufacturing microsite is growing with the building in early 2007 of a new bioclimati building with natural materials 100% vagatable to fight against the greenhouse effect. Tne interdependent trade agreement with small local beekeepers, called Total Agreement, is being maintained and strengthened.
The Gentle Beekeeping, the Philippe's sole holistic method, based on the language of the bees, is now accepted in France and all over the world and improved continuously.The progress of the society in the scope of Gentle Beekeeping, energetic Apitherapy and potentisation are steadily quoted and acknowledged in the international congresses and conferences and are the subject of official patents (pollen harvest and propolis extraction methods, energetic methods…).