英语听力： 2013-12-04 地平线：什么害死了我们的蜜蜂—6

 The first step is to try to really understand the enemy. 

 

Poor little bee. So Jean, where is it on this bee that…?

 

Ok. I think if you looked even with a naked eye. Just to the side of the abdomen¹. 

 

Yes, oh, on the belly² there. 

 

That grape red colored. 

 

Ok, it looks like here it’s carrying a football on its stomach.

 

It’s huge. It’s at least 2mm across.

 

And it’s just hanging on there and they sort of feed on the…

 

Puncture³ the soft tissue and then start feeding on the 

 

Feed on the bodily fluids. 

 

That’s right. I know from bitter experience, when you find one of those, you’re gonna been in big trouble, cause they can pretty much wipe out a colony in a couple of months. 

 

A really short time, yeah, it’s the kiss of death, isn’t it?

 

Jean Devonshire uses one of the most powerful instruments in her lab, a scanning electron microscope. She freezes the bee with liquid nitrogen, then coats it with an ultra-fine layer of conducted gold. Now we can view every tiny detail of our enemy. 

 

What we are looking at now in the center of the image there is the actual Varroa, and if I focus it finer, we can see the heads on the body obviously very easily, there you can see these sternal plates, and the Varroa sitting in the center.

 

And the head is digging in there, so it’s feeding now. 

 

It’s probably, it’s probably yeah, the Varroa knows if it slides itself underneath⁴ these plates, it can actually puncture the soft tissue parts. 

 

The Varroa mite⁵ arrived in the UK in 1992. Its spread has generally been linked to infected bees being imported around the world. And our bees had no resistance. 

 

Once it’s finished munching⁶, it leaves these open sores which then leaves the bee open to infection, so it’s a clever little thing, isn’t it?

 

It is.

1 abdomen   

n.腹，下腹(胸部到腿部的部分)

参考例句：

• How to know to there is ascarid inside abdomen?怎样知道肚子里面有蛔虫？
• He was anxious about an off-and-on pain the abdomen.他因时隐时现的腹痛而焦虑。

2 belly   

n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛

参考例句：

• The boss has a large belly.老板大腹便便。
• His eyes are bigger than his belly.他眼馋肚饱。

3 puncture   

n.刺孔，穿孔；v.刺穿，刺破

参考例句：

• Failure did not puncture my confidence.失败并没有挫伤我的信心。
• My bicycle had a puncture and needed patching up.我的自行车胎扎了个洞，需要修补。

4 underneath   

adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面

参考例句：

• Working underneath the car is always a messy job.在汽车底下工作是件脏活。
• She wore a coat with a dress underneath.她穿着一件大衣，里面套着一条连衣裙。

5 mite   

n.极小的东西；小铜币

参考例句：

• The poor mite was so ill.可怜的孩子病得这么重。
• He is a mite taller than I.他比我高一点点。

6 munching   

v.用力咀嚼（某物），大嚼( munch的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• He was munching an apple. 他在津津有味地嚼着苹果。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Munching the apple as he was, he had an eye for all her movements. 他虽然啃着苹果，但却很留神地监视着她的每一个动作。 来自辞典例句