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Packaging comb honey, ca 1890.

Packaging comb honey, ca 1890.
© University of Guelph: Burton Noble Gates Collection

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Once it's been filled, the lid and label for this large jar of honey will be put on by hand. The Saskatchewan Honey Co-op's 1960s bottling line automatically filled and sealed these pasteboard cartons. A worker in the Saskatchewan Honey Co-op's plant feeds empty honey tins into the filling machine while another applies lids to the full tins on the other end. Honey comes packed for retail sale in a range of containers, from squeeze tubes to large jars. Packaging comb honey, ca 1890. Honey flowing into a warming tank prior to bottling. Freshly extracted honey before it’s been filtered to remove extraneous material. Filling plastic honey pails. These jars of honey are ready to be boxed and then shipped to retail locations. Filling bulk honey tins for shipment to the export market, ca 1930. Honey was warmed slightly to make it less viscous and easier to package, ca 1930. Honey tins were filled according to weight, ca 1940. Taste-testing the product before putting on lids, ca 1940. This honey passed through filter cloth before being fed into each of the bulk tanks, ca 1940. Filling honey tins often offered women seasonal employment, ca 1940. Jars are filled manually in this hobbyist operation. This stainless-steel honey tank was used to heat the honey and make bottling easier, ca 1940.

Packaging

Depending on the intended market, honey may be bottled directly into small containers for retail sale or into large drums for storage or export. In an effort to appeal to a wide range of consumers, honey is packaged in containers of many different sizes and styles. These include glass jars, plastic tubs and squeezable jugs.

Like most aspects of honey processing, bottling can involve automation in large operations, or manual labour such as a hand valve on a plastic pail in smaller operations.

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