Bees and Beekeeping1

 

Broadcast: May 13, 2003
By Mario Ritter

This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
Most people have heard the sound of bees among flowers. Bees live almost everywhere in the world--except the arctic¹ areas. Many kinds of agriculture depend on these small, social insects. Without bees, fruit and nut growers as well as many other farmers would not have a crop.
There are more than twenty-thousand kinds of bees. But only honey bees make enough honey for people to use. Honey bees are highly organized social insects. They work together in a group called a colony. Each colony lives in a hive. It contains one queen bee--she lays all the eggs from which the members of the colony come. Each colony has only a few hundred males, called drones. The majority of all bees in a colony are workers, which are all females.
Bees even have a special stomach, called a honey stomach. It is used to store sweet fluid that the bees gather from flowers. Bees also have long hairs on their body and legs. These hairs capture pollen² as bees go from flower to flower. Some of the pollen is taken back to the hive. However, some is passed to the next flower. This is how many plants are fertilized³. Pollen is the reproductive material of plants. Many important agricultural crops depend on bees for fertilization2.
Inside their hives, bees store sweet fluid from flowers, called nectar, and also pollen. They may even gather nectar from some other kinds of insects. These kinds of nectar are also stored in the hive. Bees have organs that produce a fatty substance called wax. They use wax to build structures in the hive that hold eggs and store honey.
Bees make honey through a process. They add liquid from their own mouths to the nectar they have stored in the hive. The liquid breaks down the nectar into simple sugars. As the honey is stored, it dries. It becomes thicker and darker.
Honey can be very thin and light in color or dark and thick. How the honey looks depends on the kinds of flowers used by the bees. However, most honey is the easily recognized golden color. Although bees are often thought of as honey-makers, they provide a surprising number of products. Also, their greatest economic value is in fertilizing⁴ crops -- not in making golden, sweet honey.
Next week, we will tell about important products provided by bees. We will also tell about problems in beekeeping.
This VOA Special English Agriculture Report was written by Mario Ritter.

1. beekeeping [`bI:9kI:pIN] n. 养蜂
2. fertilization [7fE:tIlaI5zeIFEn] n. 肥沃, 施肥, 授精

1 Arctic   

adj.北极的；n.北极

参考例句：

• They flew over the unlimited reaches of the Arctic.他们飞过了茫茫无边的北极上空。
• The sort of animal lived in the Arctic Circle.这种动物生活在北极圈里。

2 pollen   

n.[植]花粉

参考例句：

• Hummingbirds have discovered that nectar and pollen are very nutritious.蜂鸟发现花蜜和花粉是很有营养的。
• He developed an allergy to pollen.他对花粉过敏。

3 Fertilized   

v.施肥( fertilize的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The study of psychology has recently been widely cross-fertilized by new discoveries in genetics. 心理学研究最近从遗传学的新发现中受益匪浅。
• Flowers are often fertilized by bees as they gather nectar. 花常在蜜蜂采蜜时受粉。

4 fertilizing   

v.施肥( fertilize的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Sometimes the preliminary step must be taken of reducing weed population before fertilizing. 有时候，在施肥之前，必须采取减少杂草密度的预备性步骤。 来自辞典例句
• The self fertilizing garden can also be planted in raised beds. 自我施肥的菜园也可以在苗圃床中种植。 来自互联网