Non-lethal sampling is a requirement for determining the population genetic structure of an endangered or rare species of insect. Removing a small piece of wing has been proposed as a non-lethal and minimally invasive procedure for sampling DNA from butterflies. Papers proposing this technique provide a theoretical justification for the technique, but empirical evidence has not been produced demonstrating the benign nature of this technique. The Painted Lady butterfly Vanessa cardui was reared under greenhouse conditions and then had varying amounts of metathoracic wing removed (ranging from 0% to 100%) The survivability and behavior of the butterflies were observed for the remainder of their adult lives. We provide the first empirical evidence of the effects of wing clip sampling on butterfly survivability.