Are there any commercial beekeepers in the U.S. who clip their queens' wings? I don't know of anybody here in California who does it. Maybe other parts of the country do. Based on responses, it looks like wing clipping is common in the UK, even among commercial beekeepers. And at least one commercial outfit in Australia clips wings. Is wing clipping common among commercial beekeepers in any other countries? I have always assumed that wing clipping is the sort of thing only hobbyists do nowadays. It just doesn't seem like it's worth the bother. As swarm prevention, it's pretty ineffectual. Let's face it, if I haven't had time to get to the hive by the time they're heading out the door, I'm *NOT* going to have time to get to them in the day or two of grace that a clipped queen seems to provide. And once they've already tried to swarm once and lost the old queen, I lose all sorts of brood-rearing time. I would rather manage swarming BEFORE it gets started. We try to re-queen most of our colonies in the autumn. Good young queens don't seem to swarm much. And we shake bees and make splits from our strong colonies in the spring before the swarming instinct kicks in--this knocks 'em back a bit and usually keeps 'em in the box instead of in the trees. We still lose a few swarms now and then, but it sounds to me like people who use clipped queens still lose swarms too. Shawna