At 07:54 AM 8/4/02 -0400, you wrote:
>Of course, this fellow asked me how one might "label" such
>containers.

There are reduced labeling requirements for small items such
as this.  See candy and other small food products for examples,
many don't even have nutritional requirements, though honey
would not require nutritional requirements anyways.

Minimum requirements are:
Product (honey), producer, contact information (city and state
only are ok if you are listed in a public directory),  weight (in
oz and grams).  Ingredients and nutritional information is not
require for pure honey.  There is a font point size requirement
but I don't recall exactly what size it is.

Some states have additional requirements.  (Ohio for example
had a bill that would have required the words 'home produced'
added to labels when produced in a facility that wasn't inspected.
That bill did not pass, btw.)

See http://www.fda.gov/opacom/morechoices/smallbusiness/blubook.htm
for detailed information.

>Does anyone know just how hot the machines that pack these
>things heat the honey?  I'm assuming that the honey is heated
>to the point of minimum viscosity to speed handling.

I don't know how they do it, but it certainly would be possible to
do such without a lot of heat.  It wouldn't take much to inject
honey into a straw at moderately warm temperatures 80-100 F.
That said, it's entirely possible they do overheat the honey to
make things faster.  You would probably have to contact the
maker of each.

-Tim