Clipping and Marking Queens

I have to admit I was slightly concerned when I saw the picture of the Baldock cage. However, I found this article fascinating. It explained how to mark queens. This is essentially painting them or sticking a number to them to organize and know how old a queen is. There was a pretty confusing way of colour coding with corresponding years that I did not really find very useful or easy to remember. The Baldcok cage is to keep the queen still while you do this but there were various over methods such as special pliers. The article also told about how to clip queen’s wings. This process seemed pretty tricky and the article didn’t really explain why you should do this. With some additional research I learned that clipping can also be used for marking age (left wing clipped for a year ending in an even number, right for an odd) and to prevent swarming or keep track of the queen as she cannot fly. However there are a few cons to clipping. Some beekeepers argue that the hive can sense the queen is injured and will reject and replace her.