Clipping and Marking Queens

This reading goes into how to mark and clip queens. One way to mark queens is with a Baldock cage, which traps the queen while the other bees can fit through the mesh. This allows you to mark her with paint or cement let it dry, then release her. To remember what colour corresponds with which year ending you can use What You Rear Green Bees? and 1,2,3,4,5. White =1,6 Yellow=2,7 Red =3,8 Green =4,9 Blue =5,0. You can also used numbered discs to mark queens but it is much more precarious. To do this you must capture the queen in a tube cage. Trap her against the mesh at one end of the cage and mark her. You can also twist the plunger a tiny bit so one wing pops out and you can clip it 4 mm or so. Then let the glue dry and allow her to walk back onto the comb.
To clip the queens wings, pick her up by the wings with forefinger and thumb.Then, point your left forefinger at your right shoulder and offer the queen this finger. When she grabs on with all legs, gently close your fingers on her legs. Then mark her and clip her, cutting about 1/3 of the wing completely perpendicular to the wing's surface. To make sure the cut is clean and not ripped, make sure the scissors re very sharp. Also when marking the queen, be sure that the paint gets all the way to the carapace so the workers cannot slowly chip away the paint, resulting in no marking in later years.
This article had a lot more information than the last however it does not explain the reasoning behind why marking and clipping is important. I'm not sure what clipping the queen's wings does. Otherwise there seem to be many methods of marking and clipping, which allows a good selection if one doesn't fit your skills. That is very useful since beekeepers vary a lot.