68 FIFTY YEARS AMONG THE BEES 



queen is scurrying across a comb, or when you get just 

 a glimpse of her in the hive, it is much easier to tell at 

 a glance that she is clipped if both wings on one side are 

 cut off. 



ADVANTAGE OF CLIPPIXG. 



Although nowadays the practice of clipping has be- 

 come quite general, there are a few who doubt its ad- 



Fig. 21 — Catching the Queen. 



visability. I would not like to dispense with clipping if I 

 kept only one apiary and were on hand all the time, and 

 with out-apiaries and no one to watch them it seems a 

 necessity. If a colony swarms with a clipped queen, it 

 cannot go off. True, the queen may possibly be lost, 

 but it is better to lose the queen than to lose both bees 

 and queen. 



If there were no other reason for it, I should want 

 my queens clipped for the sake of keeping a proper record 



