1889 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUKE. 



637 



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With Replies from our best Authorities on Bees. 



All queries sent in for this department should be briefly 

 stated, and free from any possible ambiguity. The question 

 or questions should be written upon a separate slip of paper, 

 and marked, "For Our Question-Box." 



Question 137. — a. Do you practice clipping queens' 

 winos? b. If so, do h<>ii do it because it saves trouble 

 inhioinij tlir swarms, or bt cause it prevents ahscond- 

 ing, or both? 



No. 



a. I do not. 



a. Yes; b. Both. 



a. Yes; b. Both. 



a. Yes; b. Both. 



a. Yes; b. Both. 



H. R. Boardman. 



RAMBLER. 



Geo. Grimm. 



A. E. Manum. 



A. J. Cook. 



S. I. Freeborn. 



a. Yes; b. To prevent absconding-. 



P. H. Elwood. 

 a. Yes, invariably, b. For both reasons. 



P. L. VlALLON. 



I practice nothing- of that sort, and am not trou- 

 bled much with swarming. C. F. Muth. 



No; we never clip wings. We tried it, and got 

 disgusted after two^seasons. Dadant &?Son. 



a. Yes. b. To prevent absconding. I very rarely 

 hive a swarm, as, three days out of four, no one is 

 present in the apiary. C. C. Miller. 



a. No. b. I found more trouble in takiug care of 

 my swarms when the queens' wings were clipped 

 than when they are not. It might be different, 

 however, in less favored localities for hiving 

 swarms. James Heddon. 



a. Yes. b. For both these reasons; but they are 

 only secondary ones with me, as I have too little 

 natural swarming to require any special attention 

 to that subject. By clipping her wing we keep 

 track of the queen, which allows us to practice cer- 

 tain methods of management on a certainty, in- 

 stead of by guesswork. O. O. Poppleton. 



a. Yes, and it pays well. b. it does both if prop- 

 erly done. Four years ago my best colony swarm- 

 ed, and left without clustering. One of the queen's 

 wings was clipped, but not short enough to prevent 

 flying slowly; but they went over a piece of woods 

 filled with undergrowth, so we could not follow 

 them, and I lost them. A. B. Mason. 



Principally because it saves trouble in hiving 

 swarms. I do not know that I ever had a swarm 

 abscond, even when my queens' wings were not 

 clipped, and I never knew more than one to make 

 any great effort to do so. Several important advan- 

 tages are gained by clipping queens' wings, in com- 

 parison with which I think the disadvantages hard- 

 ly worth mentioning. J. A. Green. 



a. We clip all our queens' wings, b. We do it to 

 make sure that no swarms gooff in our absence. 

 We have no one to look after the swarms or care 

 for the bees in any way when we are not there. 

 Our visits to each yard, during the swarming and 

 extracting season, are from a week to ten days 

 apart. Very seldom do swarms come out while we 

 are away. We make all our increase by division of 

 the old colonies. E. France. 



a. Yes. b. Both, and more especially because the 

 queen is so much more easily found, if she has the 

 larger part of all of her wings off, as I always cut 

 them. In strengthening weak colonies, and in 

 many other operations in the apiary, it is often nec- 

 essary to find the queen; and anything which fa- 

 cilitates our finding her, helps just so much in our 

 work. G. M. Doolittle. 



a. I have, the past two years, b. I seldom if ever 

 have absconding bees here, perhaps mainly be- 

 cause there is no cave or trees to enter, and I some- 

 times wonder if they are not somehow held back by 

 the great throng of bees at home. I clip, wings to 

 help control swarming. I am not positive yet that 

 I shall always keep it up for that purpose, and to 

 enable me to know my old from" my young queens 

 when I wish to displace old ones. R. Wilkin. 



I do not. I have never been troubled by bees ab- 

 sconding, or " going to the woods." My experience, 

 extending through many years and many hundreds 

 of swarms, leads me to believe that first, or prime 

 swarms, invariably cluster, after leaving the hive, 

 and that in cases reported of prime swarms leaving 

 without clustering, they had been out before on 

 some previous day, or even the same day, cluster- 

 ed, and, being unobserved, returned to the hive on 

 a second swarming. Such swarms will frequently 

 leave without clustering. Mrs. L. Harrison. 



I am an anti-clipper, largely because I greatly 

 dislike to have swarms enter other colonies, as they 

 will do when compelled to come back by the ab- 

 sence of their queen. Clipping has no effect upon 

 that abnormal disposition to swarm known as 

 swarm-fever, unless it be to make it worse; and the 

 great host of second swarms, and thirds and 

 fourths, of course have virgin queens that must 

 not be clipped. In apiaries>vhere swarming is usu- 

 ally moderate, clipping is a practical method, no 

 doubt. E. E. Hasty. 



Most of the respondents piactice clipping 

 queens' wings, both because it saves trou- 

 ble in hiving swarms, and because it pre- 

 vents absconding. James Heddon, Dadant 

 &Son, H. R. Boardman, Rambler, Mrs. L. 

 Harrison, and E. Hasty, are anti-clippers, 

 in the words of friend Hasty. For those 

 who produce extracted honey, and, as a 

 matter of course, keep strong colonies, clip- 

 ping queens' wings is not so necessary, as 

 very few swarms, comparatively, will issue. 

 But E. France does so because it makes a 

 sure thing of the swarm. With the Dove- 

 tailed hive, we have lately been putting an 

 ordinary queen-excludiug honey-board be- 

 tween the bottom-board and the brood-cham- 

 ber. Unlike the ordinary drone-excluders 

 or queen-traps attached to the entrance it- 

 self, it causes no obstruction to the bees 

 passing in and out. While it prevents the 

 bees from absconding with the queen, it al- 

 so keeps the queen in the hive, with no 

 danger of her being lost. Of course, if the 

 bees should make two or three attempts to 

 swarm in the absence of the apiarist, and 

 fail, they might kill the queen ; but this 

 they would not do with a clipped queen, 

 even without the perforated zinc. Those 

 who have a bottom-board with a bee-space 

 formed by a rim around the outside edges, 

 except at the entrance, can use their queen- 

 excluding honey-boards in the way describ- 



