Honey for school Fundraiser

Welcome to NZ Beekeepers+
Would you like to join the rest of our members? Feel free to sign up today.
Sign up
1,311
1,791
North Canterbury
Experience
Commercial
Hey team.. I have just had a small (300kg) batch of honey creamed for our school fundraiser, the plan is to have the kids actually design and attach the labels to the jars.. .
my question is, put plain and simply, can the kids also jar off the honey at the school..
the extractor will be packing it into buckets and I had this crazy idea of how cool for the kids to be involved in the bottling process...

please don’t send links to mpi regulations etc there are hundreds of pages of regs im just after a yes or no from someone familiar with the process..
thanks in advance
 
  • Like
Reactions: NZDan
245
156
Christchurch
Experience
Beginner
The regulations around charities are you can jar and sell once off in a year as part of a wider fundraiser ... a school isnt a charity but it's not a business either and its charitable as a tax donation so probably yes.

You will need to check for tutin etc and heaven help you if you contaminate the product.

We did it with our community which is a charity. We had kids, people with intellectual difficulties, people with strokes, over seas folks etc all helping spin, mash and jar it. Once it's in a bucket with a gate getting kids to bottle it is straight forward but keep an adult eye out otherwise over fills.

One of the best community building activities weve done. Hive to jar.

We used an immaculately cleaned standard kitchen as charities doing a one off are different to commercial enterprises.

I'm not a lawyer but that's what the law seemed to say was okay.
 
  • Thanks
  • Like
Reactions: NZDan and stoney
29
34
Whakatane
Experience
Commercial
Hey team.. I have just had a small (300kg) batch of honey creamed for our school fundraiser, the plan is to have the kids actually design and attach the labels to the jars.. .
my question is, put plain and simply, can the kids also jar off the honey at the school..
the extractor will be packing it into buckets and I had this crazy idea of how cool for the kids to be involved in the bottling process...

please don’t send links to mpi regulations etc there are hundreds of pages of regs im just after a yes or no from someone familiar with the process..
thanks in advance

The way I did it for the lady running the food bank. Give the Bulk honey batch labelled meeting standards it was then up to her to redistribute it into jars, I supplied the honey bucket with a gate on it for her use. In short you pot in bulk and label in RMP shed. Food bank people get bulk flour and sugar then repackage, honey can be done the same. you are not the marketer you supplied to the standard.
 

Trevor Gillbanks

Founder Member
10,637
7,219
Palmerston North
Experience
Hobbyist
Thanks Trevor so will be fine for the kids to jar at the school you think?
honey was harvested and extracted as per regs.
Yes. As long as it is extracted correctly and tested (tutin) I believe you will be fine as per .
The way I did it for the lady running the food bank. Give the Bulk honey batch labelled meeting standards it was then up to her to redistribute it into jars, I supplied the honey bucket with a gate on it for her use. In short you pot in bulk and label in RMP shed. Food bank people get bulk flour and sugar then repackage, honey can be done the same. you are not the marketer you supplied to the standard.
 
106
248
Dunedin
Experience
Semi Commercial
I have done this before with kids at school (although a few years ago now). To be honest I didn't really consider legal ramifications... Pretty sure home baking gets sold at the school fair so couldn't really see how this was any different or posed any greater risk. I will confess to not knowing the exact rules though...

With respect to labels - what we did was give the kids the sheets of printable labels and got them to draw their own designs so that every label was unique. Great art activity for the kids. The only drawback was that I ended up having to buy some of the honey because it had my daughters favourite label on it:D
 
1,311
1,791
North Canterbury
Experience
Commercial
School cooking rooms are usually licensed as a commercial kitchen so if you did it there you should be fine. I checked when the kids were harvesting, bottling and selling honey at my old school, and MPI were happy.
Thanks for the info.
we decided to have most of it packed and have kept 40 kg for the kids to do.. along with designing the labels and attaching them.. cant wait to see what the little tackers come up with.
ive been amazed at the generosity with this, from free labels from the printers to heavily discounted extraction, jars and packing.
 


Top