TURNOUTS. 145 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 



TURNOUTS. 



This is a name we give to swarms evicted or ejected from 

 parent hives tliree weeks after they sent off their first 

 swarms. Second swarms may have gone from them as well 

 as first ones ; but, on the twenty-first day after the first 

 swarm leaves a hive, the comhs are free from brood, save 

 a few drone-cells, drones being twenty-four days in being 

 hatched, and workers twenty-one days. The eggs laid by 

 the queen on the morning of the day she left the hive with 

 the first swarm, come to perfection on the twenty-first day 

 after. The young queen that has taken her place has not 

 yet begun to lay, and therefore there is no brood in the 

 hive. Very well. Large hives gather a great deal of 

 honey before they swarm. If the weather be fine while 

 fruit-trees are in blossom, they generally lay by from 3 lb. 

 to 5 lb. a-day per hive. In fine seasons, large hives, pro- 

 perly managed, contain from 20 lb. to 30 lb. of honey 

 before the month of May closes. 'New honey will not be 

 in the market for a month or two after May, if we do not 

 evict or turn out the bees from these heavy hives. But 

 we do turn them out ; and for sixty years at least my 

 father and his son have practised this mode of getting 

 honey in great quantity so early in the season. Such 

 honey is superexcellent, and commands not only a high 

 price but a ready sale. What do you consider a. good 



