Everyone knows that honeybees make honey, but how do they actually do it? Honeybees live in colonies, which means that they live with lots of other bees. Beehives, nests made of wax, are the places where they live and stow their honey.
Honeybees drink nectar from flowers or other sweet deposits from plants or trees. The honey made by these bees is used to supply the colony with food during the cold winter when there arc no flowers to drink from. Thus, these bees not only consume the nectar for nourishment but also bring it home. They have a special organ called a honey stomach which is used to carry the food to their colony.
When honeybees come back home, they regurgitate what they have put in their honey stomachs. Other honeybees in the hive come along and help them. They repeatedly eat and regurgitate many times until the product becomes somewhat digested. Next, the bees move the syrupy product into open honeycomb cells. Then they beat their wings to fan it to prevent fermentation. The fanning makes the water evaporate so that the product gets thick enough. Now it cannot easily be attacked by bacteria. Finally, it can be called honey. After this process, honeybees seal up the honeycomb cells with wax until they are hungry.
The most impressive part of this process is how seamlessly a bee colony works together. In a colony, there are female worker bees, male drones, and one queen bee. Although there are both male and females in the hive, the majority of the work is done by females. The female worker bees are in charge of taking care of the hive and creating honey. When they are young, they take care of feeding the young bee larvae. When they are older, they go out and bring nectar back to the hive, where they begin making honey. The male drones are responsible for fertilizing the eggs, but require little energy as they spend their time waiting around the hive. The single queen bee is responsible for the colony's survival. She is the only female that can lay eggs. The wonderful substance called honey would not exist without the bees' teamwork.
1. What is the main topic of the passage?
A. The role of the female honeybee
B. Preventing fermentation in honey
C. Why honeybees build huge wax nests
D. How a honeybee colony works to make honey
2. What can be inferred from the passage about honey?
A. It's not always the same color
B. It is only liked by a minority of people
C. Watery honey can go bad easily
D. It is created and cared for by the queen bee
3. What do honeybees do to prevent fermentation?
A. Blow air on the honey by waving their wings
B. Overproduce honey using their legs
C. Feed the larvae the unfermented honey
D. Bring the honey to the honeycomb cells
4. According to the passage, which of the following is NOT true of honeybees?
A. They work together in their colony.
B. They produce honey through a complex process
C. The queen bee is responsible for making honey
D The worker bees work both inside and outside of their hive.
