How Bees Make Honey
Deep inside a buzzing hive, tens of thousands of honeybees work together in one of nature's most extraordinary teams. A single hive can contain up to sixty thousand bees, and every one of them has a specific job to do. From the moment a worker bee hatches from its cell, its life is a carefully organised sequence of duties that changes as it grows older.
In the first few days of its life, a young worker bee acts as a cleaner, tidying out the cells where new eggs will be laid. After about a week, it becomes a nurse bee, feeding the growing larvae with a mixture of pollen and honey. By the time it is two weeks old, it has taken on the role of a builder, producing tiny flakes of wax from glands on its abdomen and using them to construct the perfect hexagonal cells of the honeycomb. Only when a worker bee reaches around three weeks of age does it finally graduate to the most famous role of all: forager.
Forager bees leave the hive at dawn and may fly up to five kilometres in search of nectar, the sweet liquid produced by flowers. When a forager finds a good patch of blossoms, it uses its long, straw-like tongue called a proboscis to suck up the nectar, storing it in a special honey stomach separate from its own digestive system. A single forager must visit between one hundred and fifteen hundred flowers to fill its honey stomach just once.
Back at the hive, the forager passes the nectar to a house bee through a process called trophallaxis, which is essentially mouth-to-mouth transfer. The house bee chews the nectar for about half an hour, mixing it with enzymes that begin breaking down the complex sugars. The processed nectar is then spread into honeycomb cells, where other bees fan it vigorously with their wings to evaporate the water. When the honey reaches the right thickness, the bees seal the cell with a wax cap, preserving it for the winter months ahead.
Beyond honey production, bees perform a service that is absolutely vital to our food supply: pollination. As they move from flower to flower collecting nectar, tiny grains of pollen stick to their furry bodies and are carried to the next blossom. This process allows plants to produce fruits, vegetables and seeds. Scientists estimate that one third of all the food we eat depends on bee pollination. Without these remarkable insects, our plates would look very different indeed.
Why do you think the author describes the forager role as the one a worker bee 'finally graduates to'?
Show worked explanation
The word 'graduate' is usually associated with completing a course of study and earning a higher position. By using this word, the author implies that the forager role is the highest-level job in the hive, one that requires experience. The passage shows that a bee must first work as a cleaner, nurse and builder before it is old enough and experienced enough to become a forager. ✓