Bee

I must laugh when people give in-bad-faith reviews. If one knows the whole fragrance is built around a note or DNA one personally dislikes, it helps no one to give such a polarized opinion. It's like someone with a known peanut allergy who attempts to rate a peanut butter ice cream. Like my papaw used to say, "the only taste some people have is in their mouths." Certainly apropos here. Sometimes I wonder if there is not an ulterior motive in these cases, such as gatekeeping or competition. But given the beauty of this fragrance, I can hardly fault anyone for their desire to "keep it secret, keep it safe." Simply put, Bee by Zoologist is a multidimensional journey into the appreciation of bees, specifically those that produce honey. For me, the overall experience is more evocative of a bumblebee than a honey bee. Yes, there is a full-on blast of a positively dripping dark honey note chockful of Epicurean hedonism for the first 20 minutes or so. Then, on my skin at least, it settles into a warm celebration of beeswax and floral pollen. It has a subtle animalistic quality, but it stays pleasant from start to finish, unlike say, Bee by Ellis Brooklyn. The Ellis Brooklyn scent is lovely until I detected a whiny urinal scent in it, which promptly ruined it for me. This stays sweet and powdery with only a hint of the plant-based muskiness. And unlike Honey and the Moon, it shies away from the aromas my contemporaries tend to associate with scented candles. Though, to me, I find that association very complimentary. I will say that I seem to enjoy the scent of broom much more than other Americans. Broom is evocative of warm sunny days in the late spring or early summer in the deciduous forests of Northeastern United States and surrounding areas. She's goldfinches chirping merrily, Black locust blooms, bumblebees dusted with pollen, new leaves fluttering in the breeze, and butterflies opening their wings as a harbinger of hope. Or it simply smells "vintage," if you have no imagination nor experiences with nature. The héliotrope is not incredibly strong here, but it blends perfectly with the broom note to add some powdery sugared almond. More of the creaminess comes from the tonka, which is always a beautiful note, or perhaps the vanilla. In either case, it isn't until the mournful strains of the powdery mimosa is gone that the creaminess shines. As she fades, this is no longer your queen bee delighting in her royal jelly nor your worker bee in the fields. This is now your sorrowful musky drone who hangs his head in the knowledge that once he mates with the queen, he will explode. But after his time has come and gone, the creamy vanilla and tonka are ready to shine, insulating the young with their soft warm sustenance. Not all of Zoologist's perfumes are hits for me— Moth and Cockatiel were very unpleasant openings and Seahorse leans far too much into cheap male body spray territory— Yet the ones I do enjoy are so evocative of nature. I have more awe and respect for animals than "fascination" with them, as Zoologist's packaging states, but we both agree animals are worth our time and consideration. And I am not the best about policing my purchases to ensure all are "vegan & cruelty-free," and I'm sure I own or consume more than a few objets d'art that would earn me a lifetime ban from PETA, but I still appreciate when any company is concerned with animal welfare or is eco-friendly. Pollution, deforestation, and destruction of habitats are first and foremost on my radar as the biggest harms humanity commits, and uniquely so. As an imperfect human who both appreciates what animals do on their own as well as what they can do for me, this is just one little way, of many, that I can be a better denizen of this planet.

I've been on a Honey Binge Lately (still love my Marshmallow though lol). After seeing and being told that this was supposedly THE Honey Fragrance of all Honey Fragrances, I Blind Bought this with Zero Regrets. Bee isn't the "Safe, Cutesy, and Candied Honey" that a lot of Houses and Brands incorporate when putting out Honey-Dominant Fragrances or just adding a Honey Note in. Bee is potent, animalic, and almost primal-like. I feel like I stuck my head in a beehive and a couple of bees are buzzing around me in a cautious and protective manner (The Ginger adding that "slight zing") vs Buying a Jar of Storebrand Honey and smelling it. Once the "bees" (ginger) quickly realize that I'm just a visitor/spectator, the sweetness begins to blossom. Sweet Citrus and Honeyed Florals rounded off by smooth vanilla, benzoin, Tonka, and Sandalwood keeps Bee warm. The musk provides that reminder that this isn't your store-brought honey. This is the raw and real animalic deal. The animalic aspect of this fragrance made me panic a little at first. When I first sprayed Bee on my wrist, the honey seemed like it was threatening to go "the urine route" that a lot of honey fragrances are said to tend to go to. I have to also add that this was my first spray, and my bottle was very cold, because it was just delivered. I let Bee sit and I came back to her and found that the orange and overall sweetness were more prominent, no more buzzing (aka I don't detect the ginger anymore thankfully), and Bee's entire composition is more well-rounded. Strength and Sillage go without saying. This is definitely "Queen Bee Behavior" she makes her Prescence known and she's not here for a "short reign". That spray on my wrist was damn-near eternal, and the projection was wild. This is definitely a Fall/Winter Fragrance. You may be able to get away with this in the spring (early spring and unseasonably cool days), but this is way too heavy for hot weather. I would honestly be too afraid that I'd attract actual bees in spring and warmer weather lol. Overall, I am pleased with my purchase. This was my introduction to Zoologist and I know they sometimes catch flack for their vision with fragrances sometimes being "too out there", but I definitely love and appreciate the vision with Bee. I currently have my eye on Hummingbird next.

Sublime Honey Bliss – My Ultimate Zoologist Favorite for Relaxation Wow! Zoologist Bee is absolutely sublime - rich, realistic honey that feels like liquid gold, wrapped in sunny yellow florals and creamy vanilla. It instantly uplifts the mood, turning any day into something warmer and more joyful. From the first spray, it's sticky-sweet honeycomb with a touch of ginger spice and orange zest, evolving into powdery mimosa, broom, heliotrope, and orange blossom that feel like a soft floral halo around the honey. The base deepens with benzoin, tonka, sandalwood, labdanum, and musk - giving it that cozy, incense-like resinous warmth reminiscent of high-quality Nag Champa incense mixed with fresh honeycomb. No harsh animalics here for me - just luxurious, dreamy sweetness that's comforting and addictive. I first tried a sample and fell head over heels in love with Bee, which led to a generous full bottle gift and it's become my absolute favorite from Zoologist! Bee's performance is spectacular: beast-mode longevity (all day and beyond on skin and clothes), with moderate sillage that projects just enough to enjoy Bee personally without it being overwhelming. I mostly spritz it at home for relaxation, meditation, or winding down - it creates such a serene, uplifting bubble that helps melt stress away. Bee has drawn plenty of compliments when I wear it out, too - people always ask what smells so beautiful, cozy and sweet. If you love authentic honey scents with floral depth and a meditative vibe, Bee is pure magic. It's my go-to for self-care moments and never fails to make me smile. 5/5 - definitely worth every drop! Longevity: Eternal (lasts until washed off) Sillage: Moderate Rating: 5/5

Hmm, this is different than I expected, but I do like it! Having smelled it now, I wouldn't call it photorealistic beehive (I've done some hobbyist beekeeping before), this is more of a fantasy bee themed perfume--which I guess makes sense given what Zoologist does. This is what somebody's queen bee fursona puts on before going out to pop some drones, rather than what sticking your head into an actual living bee colony smells like. That being said, it works! At first spray, its surprisingly powerful, and my wife easily smells it on me from a couple feet away. There's plenty of sweet honey, sure, but also LOTS of vanilla. Underneath that are an assortment of dusty dry florals and resins that give a sort of baby-powder impression to me. Its an innocent sort of cutesy-feminine. They say there's orange in the top notes, but it must be used sparingly to harmonize in the background instead of standing out as a distinct component. I think it gives it that sour citrussy bite that some honey can have. As it dries down, the herbalness and powderyness fade away without the scent losing any of its sweetness. Instead the honey takes center stage, with an ensemble of beeswax and pollen harmonizing in the background. At the end of the drydown there's a faint but persistent lingering beeswax and vanilla on your skin for a more warm sweetness that I can even notice into the next morning. I was looking for a more vanilla based feminine perfume, and I think this fills that role quite nicely!

Zoologist have knocked it out of the park here. Bosh my lord, what a corker! Oozy, boozy, runny honey tones that are desperate for your nose to explore. They scream at you as soon as you apply this masterpiece. It's one of the best examples of a gourmand perfume that you are ever likely to find. Finally, an honest interpretation of the smell of a bee's home, were you able to shove your nose inside it's hive without it getting stung to fuck. Thick, sweet, delicious and pungent, if you don't like honey, you will hate it, as it forces you to smell it with vigour! Supporting the glorious honey tones, you will be treated to beeswax and a complex floral spectrum. Your interpretation of the floral spectrum will be what makes you decide if it is meant for a tail or a no-tail. I think it sits right in the middle of that particular spectrum. I sprayed my last drops of this bee-autiful (yes, I went there) on one of my favourite jumpers, and the scent remains there to this day. When you consider that I sprayed it onto the jumper 3 weeks ago, that is pretty impressive! It was also a scent that did not leave my neck, even after a thorough rub-a-dub-dub under the metal plate with holes in, where the water comes out. I will be buying it again in the near future. I must have it back. 9/10. It loses a point because I don't like yellow things.

Smells exactly like the entire bee: honey, beeswax, propolis, flowers. I love beeswax so much and never imagined wanting to smell like it, but wow I am sold. This smells most strongly of beeswax on the opening, gives a lot of warm floral bee pollen in the middle and develops into a musky vanilla honeybee by the end. My partner says it smells like grandma, and I could totally see how some might think that, but I love my grandmas and I love this lol!! Probably a safe blind buy if you genuinely love beeswax, because it really does smell like it! Just bear in mind if you like more masculine scents this leans vanilla/powdery/musky for much of the wear. Smells absolutely heavenly on a rainy fall day, makes me feel so cozy and want to kick my feet lol-- I can see myself wearing this all winter and into spring, but not sure how I'd feel about this wearing this in warmer weather. It is so nostalgic and comforting. I'm being stingy with a sample I bought because the full price at $270CAD is steep to me at this early point in my fragrance journey. If it continues to rank high as I keep smelling things, I could see myself pulling the trigger because this is a timeless amazing smell.

Finally got my hands on this for my birthday. A small part of me is disappointed, as someone below said, there’s nothing challenging about this frag. From a niche perfume house like Zoologist, I expected something bizarre to sneak its way in here. But no, its sweet summer flowers and bee spit. Not quite a gourmand or edible honey to my nose; the beeswax note keeps it in cosmetic territory but it is quite sweet and heady. More lipstick than honeyjar. I think if Bee didn’t have an incensed base of labdanum and benzoin, it would really lose me with the florals. A huge reason why I haven’t purchased Slowdive yet, despite honey being one of my favorite notes. If you appreciate the honey note in Honey & The Moon, this one is quite similar but a bit less cloying and a bit more dry. I don’t find this honey to be vanillic or lactonic as mentioned below either. Its quite literally waxy. Beeswax. Petroleum. Crayola crayons if you sniff too long. Cosmetic and sweet and waxy. I quite enjoy it though.

Beautiful and unique. Here is something new under the sun. I have a decant of Guerlain's Tobacco Honey, and they could be cousins. But they're different enough that if Bee wasn't in my collection, Tobacco Honey could not replace it. Bee is very honey-sweet, with a ginger kick, powdery florals around the edges, and light sandalwood in the dry down. There's no honey note in the perfume pyramid -- which makes *no* sense at all; I swear there's a strong honey note here. But according to the Zoologist website, the top notes for Bee are only orange, ginger syrup, and something called "Royal Jelly Accord." My guess is, honey is part of that accord. I could bee wrong though. I'm halfway through my second bottle. This is a strong love for me, but even so, it's such an olfactory outlier that I can't recommend blind buying this. Performance is spectacular. Bee lasts until you wash it off. It's safe for work, leans slightly feminine, and layers well with peanut butter. 9/10

This is what I measure all future and past honeyed fragrances against. Its ruined me for everything else. It's such a viscous thick layers of sunshine and red clover scent. Its vanilla and clover honey straight from the comb. This puts me in my Grandfather's garage in mid September spinning the honey out of the comb (supers) of his many beehives and chewing on the discarded wax while we fill Ball jars and then load our bags with them to take home. It's such a delightful gourmand that lasts forever and leaves quite a trail for the first couple of hours. The guru honey fragrance for fuzzy sweaters and buttered toast on cold days. PS There is a hint of ginger to counteract all the sweetness. The mimosa in this is what stands out after the honey and vanilla the most. It is powdery and reminds me of bee pollen. Soft fine golden powder stuck to fuzzy bee tummies.

Zoologist Bee is from the “Fuck Yeah” school of perfumery — in this case, “fuck yeah, honey!” It smells like honey — syrupy, liquid-gold, almost boozy — and creamy beeswax. I’m surprised by how much I like it, given that I typically shy away from overtly sweet scents. There’s an edge in there somewhere, maybe from the ginger, maybe from an animalic note not listed in the official description. Bee is sweet, but not soft — it’s zingy and potent. Potent being the operative word. I get a good two or three feet of sillage. This is not a shy scent. I get a bit of orange blossom in the heart, and definitely a bit of play-doh texture from the heliotrope; an hour in or so, it starts to darken and I can really feel the labdanum and sandalwood. But it’s really all about the honey. I enjoy it and find it plausibly unisex — if you like Big Honey, go for it.

Here is my impression of Bee: I work in the honey/bees wax business. But I don't play in the sweet sticky honey. Nope. My job is taking all the wax hives and get them ready for process into varous goods. (After all the honey has been sucked out.) It is the end of the day, and my clothes and hair waft a resinous bee's wax scent that is lightly sweet. This is the scent of Bee. I bet this would bloom more so in warmer weather. I would not call this overtly gourmand. It is a very lovely scent, very well made. It is not about the honey, but rather all about the wax. Packaging is stellar, and that fine mist sprayer is FINE and amazing! If you want more syrup sweet honey.....then you want Slowdive. btw....this scent lasts for AGES! especially in warm weather. one spray is more than enough. WOW.

9.5/10 so much whimsy. It's like when Winnie-the-Pooh when he's stuck in the tree. YUMMMM This is why you give samples away with purchases! I didn't buy this sample. I was gifted it with my purchase of full-size Squid and Trex, and from those two purchases, you can tell I'm not a huge fan of gourmand. But when I tried it, it was like I was laying on the ground, I see someone running full speed at me, and then jumping on me elbow first in the stomach. This isn't a shy, demure, sweet scent. This is a AAAAAAAAAAAHHHH I"M SWEET kind of smell. Like trex, this isn't for the faint of heart. And unlike a lot of gourmands, she's not going away any time soon. I definitely want to buy a full bottle of it in the future when my collection dies down and build an entire body care routine around it.

My first impression was just: BLEH! And that's still my reaction every time I spray it, it's just so sweet and sticky in the first few seconds, it's overwhelming. But very quickly it becomes softer as it settles, you can really smell vanilla, it's actually very nice and cosy. It's still very bold nevertheless, and that can be overwhelming for some. It's honey, but raw, animalistic honey, straight out of the beehive. It's very realistic and its sweetness also reminds me of flower blossoms, so that can make it a good spring fragrance. I'm currently reading Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose, and when I smell Bee I imagine a medieval monastery and the smell of mead they could be producing there. I find the full bottle to be a bit overpriced but I will be getting the travel size version.

My grandfather used to enjoy beekeeping as a hobby, so I remember very clearly the whole olfactory palette of this craftsmanship. Note, honey is just the end product, not the beginning! It all starts with an explosion of beeswax and pollen with a bit of propolis, followed by sweet yellow florals in abundance (as if the bees left their home for the hunt). Honey 🍯 comes to me on dry down only, alternating with sandalwood, as if now the product is ready and stored in a wooden beehive for winter. Perhaps that’s why Bee sits better on me in cold days, it gives that cozy confidence of being properly stocked up on vitamin-rich sugars, hence immune against cold sad days.

I love this scent. Just like you, I use fragrances that, together with my appearance, clothing, and behavior, help create the overall atmosphere in social gatherings. However, there are scents in my collection that I use to create an atmosphere just for myself when I'm alone – usually to create a pleasant, calm, meditative ambiance through typically warm fragrances. This is one of them. If I use it in social settings, it's always when I'm meeting close friends to enhance a warm, friendly atmosphere. In my opinion, it is a beautiful and unique scent. I love it. PS: It's not the scent of honey, but of honeycombs. Strong sillage and long lasting longevity.

I am a bee, and my job is to bring pollen back for my queen! After I reach the hive, I'm greeted by all my sisters excitedly telling me about the different flowers they got to taste! Our queen enters the room and gives us all big hugs, "great job my sweethearts" she says. She's always been as sweet as the honey we produce! 8/10, I never thought I would wish to be a bee. However! The top note is very polarizing, give it a chance to dry down into your skin, it's a very soft honey that doesn't turn into a gourmand sugar bomb. The top note is the dog that tried to eat me as I was trying to reach my hive. Very annoying, but just a momentary nuisance!!

Bee 🐝 by Zoologist Perfumes is something new under my perfume roof—sultry, bold, and captivating. The first spritz is pure, realistic honey,🍯 so lifelike I went to the kitchen to compare! The honey note is prominent, even slightly animalic, even pissy... but softens quickly as vanilla adds warmth and sweetness. Mimosa peeks through as a powdery, sweet yellow floral, balancing the composition. While rich and unique, Bee is raw, animalistic honey straight from the hive—Not mass-pleasing or a Safe blind buy. I plan to get the travel size to see how much I’ll truly use and experiment by layering it with sweeter, flatter perfumes to add sensuality.

This fragrance is both a curse and a blessing. It gorilla grips on to EVERYTHING it touches including your nose if you dare smell the atomizer. It'll get on your hands if you touch the door knob of the room it's stored at. It'll cling to the walls of your thoughts if you dare think about it . It'll creep in to your dreams and belly dance around your body duc-taped to a chair in a windowless prison-room. It'll grip to everything in your life like the Mardi Gras craft glitter you wore that one time. It'll trap you in a barrel of shimmering cartoon honey and pussy juice and yeet you in to the roaring ocean. You have been warned. #beastmode

The smell of honey is practically three dimensional on first spray - like putting your nose up against real honeycomb or something like that. This seems to heavily polarise people - people seem to either say "oh wow that's amazing" or describe it as sickly, cloying or off-putting. It eases out on the dry-down and the vanilla and incense-like notes come through but the effect isn't transformative - this still very much lives up to its name and gives you honey throughout it's duration. Personally I like it a lot, my favourite of the Zoologist lines I've tried, but you will smell like a jar of honey.

I have been looking for a honey scent where honey was the star. I wanted something that captured all the facets of honey. Too often, it's just a sweet floral smell, or it's overly powdery, or it's only purpose is to amplify another note--oud, rose, tobacco. Not so with the Bee. Zoologist has imagined honey as the animalic force of nature it is. This isn't bees buzzing gently through a meadow. This is bees masticating furiously in the hive, possessed by the all-pervasive scent of the queen. Holographic, photo-realistic, and almost sexual. This is not for the faint of heart. I am enamored.