174 
DR. MILLERS 
Q. 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 on 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 alo.ng, and it may remain clustered there 5, 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, 
