Raymond J. Lackey says:- > Clipping the queen's wings will not prevent swarming. It keeps the > queen from leaving the area but she will still be driven out of the > hive. If you are there daily or more often, you can then take her > and possibly the swarm to a new hive. You are still faced with after > swarms. No Good!!! I can't agree with this. (Although I do agree that queen excluders are no good.) Clipping is definitely useful as part of a swarm control method. Two undesirable things happen when a colony swarms. 1) You loose the queen. As a consequence there is a break of a month or so in laying before the young queen comes on stream. 2) You loose a substantial fraction of your worker bees. If the queen is not clipped swarming can occur as soon as the first queen cells are capped, about 6 days after the egg was laid. This means that even if you inspect your bees weekly there is a risk of losing a swarm. If the queen is clipped the swarm will still emerge at the same time but the queen will be unable to join it so the rest of the bees will soon return to the hive. The queen may return if she can find her way back but if that happens it's a bonus. The main point is that you havn't lost the worker bees. What clipping does is buy you time. If, during inspection, you find swarm prepartions but the queen hasn't left you can use one of a number of methods. (I use artificial swarming.) If the queen has gone at least you still have the rest of the bees. You will still need to do something. To prevent afterswarms you will need to remove all but one of the queen cells. (Don't forget the bees are likely to start emergency queens if there are any larvae young enough.) There are other possibilities such as requeening with a mated queen but I've run out of time so I'll leave them for now! -- Malcolm Roe Phone : +44 442 230000 ext 5104 Crosfield Electronics Ltd Fax : +44 442 232301 Hemel Hempstead, Herts. HP2 7RH, UK E-mail : [log in to unmask] ------------------------------------------------------------------------