The honeybee is a very unusual kind of insect. _____ (46) other insects which live alone, the honeybee lives as a/an _____ (47) of a community. These bees live together in what is known as a bee _____ (48) The head of the bees is called the queen bee. She is _____ (49) than the rest of the bees. Her main task is to _____ (50) eggs. These bees live together in what is known as a bee _____
- (a)house.
- (b)home.
- (c)army.
- (d)colony.
Correct — D, colony. A colony is the recognised name for the whole social group of honeybees living and working together, the queen with her workers and drones, so 'a bee colony' is exactly what the passage is defining.
- (a)house. — There is no fixed term 'bee house' in English. The structure that houses the bees is a hive.
- (b)home. — 'Home' is vague and general, and the words 'what is known as' signal that a recognised term is wanted.
- (c)army. — 'Army' is used of soldiers and, among insects, of army ants. It names no grouping of bees.
A cloze item asking for the accepted term for a social group of honeybees.
The phrase 'what is known as' is the signal, because it tells you the blank wants not any reasonable word but the recognised name, which rules out the vague options at once. Keep the pair straight while you are here — the colony is the community of bees, while the hive is the structure they occupy. The four options are printed with full stops in the paper and are reproduced above exactly as printed.
- A honeybee colony is made up of a single queen, thousands of female workers and a number of male drones.
- The hive is the physical nest or box, while the colony is the social group of bees living in it.
- Collective terms are specific to the animal, since ants and termites also live in colonies while a group of wolves is a pack.
- Choosing a word that merely sounds sensible when the sentence is asking for the accepted term.
Asked as a cloze item in which a phrase such as 'what is known as' demands the technical term rather than a plausible synonym.
No directly related past PYQ was found.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Choose the word that fits — A large group of ants living together is called a _____.
- (a)herd
- (b)colony
- (c)flock
- (d)pack
Answer(b) colony — the accepted term for a social insect community.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Choose the word that fits — Beekeepers keep their bees in a wooden _____.
- (a)colony
- (b)hive
- (c)swarm
- (d)kennel
Answer(b) hive — the hive is the structure, the colony is the bees inside it.