In the garden beekeeper blog, a reader commented that trimming the wings is now one of the absolute no-gos. And beekeeping by nature is different.

Why does the garden beekeeper clip the wings of queens? This is indeed an ugly measure - at least at first glance. What does it do?

It is one of several measures to prevent the colony from swarming. This is especially important when bees are kept in the city, because it makes neighbours nervous if a swarm of bees hangs from a tree or even from a sun umbrella in their garden.

Pruning a queen's wing does not initially prevent the colony from swarming. But the migrating bees notice in the next but one garden that their queen is not there, and return to their old home without having done anything. After half an hour this impressive spectacle is over again, as if nothing had ever happened.

Meanwhile, the queen is sitting in the grass, carefully protected by a handball-sized bee ball, a few meters away from her hive.

The garden beekeeper then carefully puts her back into the hive, where she immediately returns to her task and lays eggs.

And if it did not die then it still lays today.