I’ve discussed labelling jars of honey previously. In addition to a legally acceptable label, any honey sold via a third party should probably have a tamper-proof seal. More correctly, these should be called tamper-evident seals as they don’t stop anyone tampering with the jar. These usually take the form of an adhesive strip that connects the lid to one side of the jar, although there are other styles. Some of the shops I sell through insist on tamper-evident seals, for understandable reasons.
DIY isn’t always best
I’ve made my own tamper-evident seals using my trusty Dymo LabelWriter 450 Duo. This simple thermal printer has two print heads. One prints individual labels and the other prints to tape. You can purchase thin, clear adhesive Dymo tape which makes quite good tamper-evident seals. It can be printed with a website address or other information in black ink.
However, I’ve standardised on square jars with black lids and the black text on the clear Dymo label was therefore unreadable in places. In addition, the tape is quite expensive (about £11 for 7 metres†), increasing the ‘packaging’ costs of my honey. Finally, the strip that must be removed from the back of the tape was infuriatingly fiddly (hence tamper tantrums), so slowing the labelling process. Perhaps I need glasses?
C. Wynne Jones clear tamper-evident seal …
Clearly better
Instead of persevering with a DIY solution I now purchase rolls of 1000 clear tamper-evident labels from C. Wynne Jones for about £27. These are easy to apply as long as you develop a system to keep fingerprints off the underside of the label. They adhere well and are very unobtrusive.
Importantly, any attempt to remove the jar lid stretches the tamper-evident label destructively, making it very obvious that the jar has been, er, tampered with.
Clear(ly) tamper-evident seals
When the jar is finally opened, the first thing that happens is the tamper-evident seal is destroyed. This isn’t too worrying since they cost less than 3p.
Finally, if you want to support a good cause and use tamper-evident seals consider purchasing them from the charity Bees for Development. These are also available from Thorne’s who developed the scheme. With these, 10p from each jar sold goes to support their work promoting “sustainable beekeeping to combat poverty and to build sustainable, resilient livelihoods.”
† At this price the Dymo tape costs quite a bit more than personalised tamper-evident labels from Thorne’s. These are are available in a wide range of colours and styles.
Honey has a long shelf life if prepared and stored properly. By long shelf life I don’t mean weeks or months. I mean years. And lots of them. Ceramic pots of honey have been found in Egyptian pyramids and are apparently still edible, though it’s notable that there’s never any direct quotation on what the flavour is like. Honey has also been discovered in Georgia that date back about 5,500 years, though again there’s no comment on the flavour. At the time of writing (autumn 2016) my honey carries a ‘best before’ date of December 2018 which I reckon is reasonably safe. From January next this will be December 2019.
Faded glory …
Whether those ancient honeys tasted good or bad, there can be relatively few foodstuffs that remain even identifiable over hundreds, let along thousands, of years. This longevity is due to a combination of the low water content and high acidity of honey, which makes it an extreme environment for the micro-organisms that usually spoil food. In addition to this, enzymes added during nectar processing by the bees increase the hydrogen peroxide content. Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is also anti-microbial, and is one of there reasons that honey can be used for wound dressings. Notwithstanding all of this natural protection, honey deserves being properly looked after to ensure it can be enjoyed at its best.
Long term storage
Spring honey crop …
I store extracted honey in food-grade 30lb buckets with airtight lids in a cool environment (an unheated entrance hall with a flagstoned floor). I measure the water content using a refractometer when I extract and write this on the lid of the bucket, generally using the honey with the highest water content first (though this also depends upon demand for particular honey types). The apiary and date of extraction are also recorded.
I bottle in batches, one or two buckets at a time. This is a convenient amount in terms of sales, space in the warming cabinet and minimising problems with frosting. It’s also just about my limit for repetitive manual work and restricts the amount of heavy jarred honey that needs to be stored. Finally, labelling 60 or more jars is also a pretty tedious experience, though I do like the appearance of serried rows of identically labelled jars ready to go off to the shop.
Faded glory
Jarred honey needs to be stored somewhere cool and out of direct sunlight. I use the same cool entrance hallway I use for buckets of honey. The out of direct sunlight instruction is really to avoid subjecting the honey to fluctuating temperatures. Inevitably, one or two jars are kept on the shelf to attract sales or as gifts for visitors.
I recently noticed that the thermal printed labels (Dymo) I use fade quite badly when exposed to sunlight. The ½lb round at the top of this page has been on my office shelf since January, exposed to full sun (or as much full sun as we get in Fife). Next to it is a ¾lb square† that has been recently labelled. The fading of the label on the left is very obvious. Therefore, if you use thermal printers to prepare simple DIY labels this is an additional reason to keep your jarred honey in dark, cool conditions … or give it away/sell it faster 😉
† These jars are from C. Wynne Jones, as are the clear anti-tamper labels which are a big improvement on the fiddly thin Dymo transparent tape I was previously using.
What sort of honey labels do you use? Of course, if you keep it all for yourself or just give it to friends and family that question could be Do you label your honey? However, if you sell it via a third party or direct there are regulations that govern the labelling of honey for sale to consumers. I’m not going to attempt to decipher these rules or provide guidance on what is legal and what is not – it’s a minefield and involves Packaged Goods Regulations, Weights and Measures Act, Food Labelling Regulations and, last but by no means least, the Honey Regulations. It differs whether you’re selling direct or via a third party and the rules probably differ in England and Scotland. Phew! You are advised to talk to your local Trading Standards people who will advise you.
Commercial label
The beekeeping suppliers offer a wide range of pre-printed and customisable labels. Before moving to Scotland I used colour, high gloss, ‘easy-peel’ removable labels. Although they looked attractive I was never sure they actually contributed significantly to sales. The investment in labels discouraged me from from changing from 1lb ’rounds’ to 12oz hex jars (where the profit margins are higher 😉 … How many farm shops, garden centres and similar places now sell 1lb jars?) and I had no flexibility in making smaller batches for particular honey types. Having now moved and got a few buckets of Scottish honey from the summer I needed to make some new labels. Since the majority of my sales initially are going to be direct and local I wanted a simple label that didn’t obscure too much of the jar, was easy to read, straightforward to customise and – ideally – inexpensive and easy to produce at home. I’ve also always liked the rather stylish designs like the Honey Hunter labels at the top of the page (though these probably aren’t legal for 3rd party sales in the UK) and thought DIY label-printing might be an inexpensive way to try and achieve something similar.
Dymo labelling software …
I’ve got a Dymo LabelWriter 450 Duo. These printers use thermal printing technology so have no toner cartridges or ink. Dymo also provide an application (Mac and PC) for label design and printing (right). It’s relatively intuitive to use but has a few quirks. However, it allows embedding of pictures, barcodes, auto-incrementing numbers and supports the majority of fonts available on your system, though not all font sizes are possible for some reason. Standard format images (PNG, GIF, JPG) can be embedded, resized and rotated. There are useful formatting tools like left/right/top/bottom align, reordering front/back of overlapping objects and the ability to create templates and save label designs. There’s also the ability to create curved text though I’ve not used this. Irritatingly there’s no way to print to the very edge of the label – none of the images or text can be placed closer than about 1.5mm from the label edge and this distance is slightly greater on the left hand side of the label. Nevertheless, the Dymo Label™ software makes designing and printing labels, one at a time or dozens sequentially numbered, a doddle.
Simple honey labels …
It was straightforward to design and print labels for 8oz, 12oz and 1lb jars in small numbers, each carrying a different batch number, best before date, honey type etc. The printing is very sharp, smudge-free (even immediately after printing) and water-resistant, though the label probably isn’t. The original Dymo labels can be easily and cleanly removed from jars without leaving a residue. I used these labels in the run-up to Christmas and – although functional and perhaps a little utilitarian – received no adverse comments. Since I have apiaries in several locations I can easily run off customised labels for individual places, without significant investment or breaking the plethora of regulations that govern honey labelling. If you sell honey to guest houses or garden centres (for example) it is easy to prepare personalised labels in small quantities very economically.
Printer and label costs
Although the list price of these printers is a bit steep, the usual online stockists often offer ~50% reductions. At the time of writing Amazon are selling the LabelWriter 450 printer and 3 assorted label rolls for about £50. Replacement Dymo thermal paper rolls are usually a bit over a tenner for 500+ labels of suitable sizes, but you can purchase compatible generic thermal paper rolls for significantly less. For example, Dymo #99012 (36mm x 89mm) are £12.75 for 2 x 260 whereas well reviewed, compatible, generic equivalents are £7.98 for 5 x 260 … or about 0.6p/printed label. However, don’t bother with the generic ‘clear’ compatible labels. Firstly, they aren’t anything like clear (!) and they also smear very badly. Remember that thermal printers use different printing technology and don’t use toner like inkjet or laser printers so there are no additional running costs 🙂
Small batches …
Granulated honey …
Personalised labels …
But they’re not in colour … ?
Thermal printers only print black on the label background colour, which is almost always white. For just a splash of colour you could use fluorescent marker pens, for example to highlight the banding on a ‘cartoon’ of a bee. For more extensive colour it’s relatively easy to produce labels on a suitable laser printer … the subject of a future post. For comparison, suitable Avery labels cost 3-4p per label (excluding the outlay on hardware and toner) but you need to print a minimum of a dozen (one sheet) at a time.
