In honour of my Dad's 70th birthday this past Saturday, I'm posting a recording he made a couple of years ago.

Dad took up a beekeeping about 10 years ago, and has been regaling the family with interesting bits of bee lore ever since. One particularly cool fact: Queen honey bees occasionally make a loud "piping" noise. Wikipedia says this happens when two queens are preparing to do battle for control of the hive. At any rate, it is very rare to hear a queen piping.

Dad stuffed a microphone into one of his hives, and with some patience, managed to record quite a few minutes of one of his queens piping.

This recording is 11:22 long. The first few minutes are Dad's intro. The rest is recorded noise of the hive. If you are impatient, skip ahead to about 3:30 into the recording -- that's where the queen really gets going.

The link below should launch the recording. It's a WMA variable bit-rate (good quality) rip from CD. Please be warned - the file is large - 14 MB!

Queen Piping - click here

Happy Birthday Dad!

(Note: "http://allan.sinton.ca" redirects to this page.)