is lost.
Moisture breeds mold and mold means decay.

Ask yourself these questions: "Do I ever lose any dried products? Are
my dried products when soaked and cooked as near like the original
fruit as possible?" If you lose products and if your dried fruits are
tasteless you had better start the conditioning process. For with this
one step added to your drying you need lose no dried products, and you
need not dry the fruits to the brittle stage, as you must of necessity
do when you put them away immediately.

After you have poured the dried products back and forth every day for
three or four days as an additional precaution, reheat the dried fruit
to 140 degrees just long enough--about thirty minutes--to allow the
heat to penetrate throughout the product.

Two kinds of moths stand out prominently among insects that attack
dried fruits and vegetables. They are much more likely to get into the
fruit during the process of drying than to find their way through
boxes into the stored products. This applies particularly to drying in
the sun. The Indian-meal moth is the most destructive of these
insects. It is about three-eighths of an inch long and has a cloaked
appearance, one-third gray and the rest copper-brown. The fig moth is
about the same size, but dark, neutral gray. A minute, flattened
chocolate-brown beetle usually accompanies these moths and does
considerable damage. Both of the moths deposit their eggs on fruit
when it is on the drying racks--usually at dusk or after dark, for
these insects are not fond of daylight.

It takes from three to ten days for the eggs to hatch into whitish or
pinkish grublike caterpillars, and from five to ten weeks from the
laying of the eggs before more moths appear to lay another lot of
eggs. A number of "broods" or generations are produced yearly, so if
a few of these moth eggs are stored away on dried fruits or vegetables
hundreds of caterpillars are produced and many pounds of valuable
material may be destroyed during the winter if the products are stored
in a warm room. Dried fruits stored in warm, dark bins or in sacks
offer especially favorable places for the development of these
destructive moths.

It is evident that the larger the package, the greater the chance of a
few eggs doing much damage. Small cartons or containers confine the
injury from these moths to small quantities of material; for if the
containers are closed tightly the insects cannot easily escape from
them