I never clean the bore of my .22s. Well, almost never. The wax off the bullets form a protective layer to protect it from rust. In bench .22s, the rules may be different and since repetition is what they're looking for, to achieve this repetition, shoot 10 rounds, or whatever, clean, repeat for record. I believe for us ordinary shooters, however, no cleaning the bore has positive results. As someone pointed out, more .22s are ruined by over-cleaning than by under-cleaning.

I've got a REmington 582 that hasn't been cleaned for years and it shoots just fine.