Queen Clipping

In the last entry I wrote about using the Demaree method of swarm control, temporarily separating the Queen and mature bees from the housebees and brood to reduce the chances of swarming. There's a couple of other steps sometimes taken to reduce the chances of swarming based on basically stopping the Queen bee from being able to fly away. One method is to place a Queen Excluder below the brood box so the Queen can't physically escape -the Excluder is basically a set of slots that are too narrow to stop a queen passing through them but wide enough for a worker to get through. One disadvantage of that is that drones are also unable to exit the brood box too. It's probably worth doing if for example a beekeeper is going away for a short while. Another way to stop the Queen flying away is to clip her wings.

One marked Queen

As well as bees I also have chickens and I already clip their wings, after all I don't want to come home and find they've decided to hop over the wall and dug up next doors bedding plants. Whilst people talk about 'clipping wings' you actually only clip one wing so the bird (or bee) can't fly properly.With a bee you only need to cut off the tip of the wing.

I decided to try the Queen in Hive3 first, that's the weakest colony and the one I'd miss least if things went belly up. Opening the hive I quickly located her, partially because she doesn't seem very shy but also because there's less bees in there. Initially catching her in a Queen Clip I transferred her into my gloved left hand and held her gently whilst using a pair of nail scissors to cut the tip off her right wing. I didn't have any problems and was rather pleased with my first attempt.

Then I released her onto the top bars of the open hive and it went downhill as she dropped between the frames. Bees have really grippy feet and don't generally fall down so that didn't bode well. Pulling out a couple of frames and shining my phone's torch onto the floor of the hive I could see her lying there with a small group of workers around her. She was moving a little but not a lot. That didn't bode well.

I closed up the hive and checked hives 1 and 2 then opened 3 again to see if she'd moved. She hadn't. I figured I'd probably held her too tightly and damaged her. I'd probably committed regicide by accident. The colony would have to raise a new Queen, she'd have to mate then start laying eggs and they'ed have to hatch, that'd be about 2 months before the population increased. The colony could've dwindled and died out by then :-o

It was about a week before the York Beekeepers' Association Auction so I figured I'd buy a new nuc of bees there if she was dead. The Friday before the auction I opened Hive3, removed a couple of frames and had a look at the hive floor where I'd last seen her. She wasn't there.Well no surprises there really, bees usually take out the dead after all. I started checking the frames and found eggs in them. If the Queen was dead any eggs she'd laid would've been hatched by that point. Turning the frame over I was surprised to see the Queen, with her blob of red paint and clipped right wing, wandering along the comb as if nothing was wrong.

She'd survived having her wing clipped and returned to laying. Hopefully she'll soon catch up colonies 1 and 2. After that experience I decided to modify my technique by holding the queen by her other wing. A few days later I opened Hive1 and clipped the Queens' wing with no problems at all. I wasn't able to find Hive2's queen yet but I'll be sure to give her a snip when I do.

From what I've read clipping a wing doesn't actually stop the bees from swarming. But it does stop the Queen flying with the swarm which then returns to the hive once they've noticed her absence. Some literature suggests the clipped Queen is seen as damaged by the bees and so they replace her sooner, not a problem for me as my Queens are probably all 2 years old now and I'm wanting them superceding at the moment anyway.