If you produce extracted honey you may leave your honey with bees for a week or two after the honey flow is over.  Extracting should be done in hot weather, during August or early part of September.  A modern hand or power extractor is an absolute necessity.  There are still a few old timers who “butcher” their bees late in the fall, and render the honey by the “hand mash and sheet strain” method, but they are only relics of a poetical past and going fast.

Honey to be extracted must be well capped over.  If extracted too thin it will ferment and get sour.  If left with bees too long it will be too thick and hard to extract.  Extracting ought to be done in a bee-tight room to keep out robber bees.  Extracted supers may be returned to the bees in the evening or piled up at a distance in a safe place for bees to clean out.  Extracted honey must be left to stand in a settling tank for about a week, or until all air bubbles and wax particles have risen to the top.  It should be put up into five gallon cans or barrels for wholesale trade.  For retail trade it should be bottled when needed, else it will candy in the glass.  Bottling it hot or heating it after bottling will delay crystallization for a considerable period.  The bottles ought to be white, clean and labeled with your name.  Each kind of container should be well packed in a wooden shipping case.  Do not make it a practice to sell a large amount to a customer at once, sell rather smaller amounts at frequent intervals.

ORCHARD NOTES.

Conducted monthly by R. S. MACKINTOSH, Horticulturist, Extension Division, University Farm, St. Paul.

Once in a while it is well to pause for a few moments to consider some of the results of past efforts.  We have been growing apples in Minnesota in large quantities.  Insects and diseases are causing more damage each year, and this has lead us to pay more attention to the prevention of these pests.  A regular spraying program has been outlined, and many persons have adopted it.  What are the results?  It seems to us that the results of spraying at West Concord, Minn., should be made known to the readers of the MINNESOTA HORTICULTURIST. It indicates very clearly the value of spraying and how someone in a community can take charge and diligently push for better methods.  In this case the instructor in agriculture, with the aid of his superintendent and board of education, secured a power sprayer and began to spray the orchards in the vicinity.  At first it was necessary to ask the owners if they might spray their trees.  After three years, however, the owners appealed to Prof.  Updegraff to have their trees sprayed.  This year he had more work than he could manage.  Demonstrations of this kind show the value of the work so vividly that the most skeptical gradually becomes convinced of its value.

Several schools have purchased spraying outfits.  We hope that we shall hear from more of them in the future.  In many cases the spraying outfit is used for whitewashing the interior of barns and other buildings.