174 DR. miller's 



[J. How do you clip a queen's wings? Is it good policy to 

 do so? 



A. Probably the majority think it is good policy to clip. Mr. 

 Doolittle catches a queen by one wing, lets her hold to the comb 

 with her feet, and with a very sharp knife cuts the wing against 

 thumb and finger. Probably a larger number, myself in the num- 

 ber, use a pair of scissors, holding the queen by the thorax (not 

 by the abdomen or hinder part) between the thumb and finger of 

 the left hand, and cutting off most of the two wings on one side. 



Q. If a clipped queen swarmed from a hive upon a high stand 

 and fell to the ground in the absence of the apiarist and could 

 not get back, would the swarm return to the old hive, and would 

 they, on finding their queen absent, proceed to rear a new queen 

 in her place, or what would happen? 



A. The swarm would return to the hive, in which there are 

 already a number of young queens in their cells. The first of 

 these will emerge from its cell in a little more than a week, gen- 

 erally, and a swarm is likely to issue with her. 



Q. Clipping queen's wings, as I have repeatedly read in your 

 journal, is in vogue among American beekeepers. I would like to 

 make a trial of it in the spring, but have some misgivings. Can 

 one be sure that the issuing swarm will find and cluster about the 

 queen, which, perhaps, has fallen upon the ground a few steps 

 from the bee-house? Or can it also happen that the swarm does 

 not find the queen, and consequently returns to the hive from 

 which it issued? (Germany.) 



A. When the swarm issues, of course the clipped queen falls 

 on the ground. If there is no one oil hand to pick up the queen 

 it very rarely happens that the swarm finds her and clusters 

 about her. Indeed, in all my experience I never knew such a case. 

 Sometimes the queen will be found at a little distance with a 

 little cluster about her, perhaps as big as a walnut. Generally, 

 however, she will be entirely alone. The swarm will return to 

 the hive, perhaps in less than five minutes, after circling around 

 in the air for a little time, and will pay no attention to the queen, 

 even if she be quite near the hive on the ground, its only desire, 

 apparently, being to hurry back into the hive as soon as possible. 

 Often the swarm will cluster on a tree, just the same as if the 

 queen were along, and it may remain clustered there S, 10, 15 

 minutes or longer. In most cases the queen will find her way 

 back into the hive if she is left to herself. The business of the 

 beekeeper, however, is to pick her up, put her in a cage, move 

 the old hive away, and put an empty one in its place, and then. 



