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. Her main task is to _____ eggs.
- (a)lay
- (b)hatch
- (c)make
- (d)bear
Correct — A, lay. English says that a bird, an insect or a reptile 'lays eggs', and that is precisely the queen bee's work in the colony, since she produces the eggs from which every new bee comes while the workers do the foraging, the feeding and the defending.
- (b)hatch — Hatching is the later stage, when the young break out of the eggs. The queen's task is to produce the eggs, not to open them.
- (c)make — 'Make' is not used with eggs in this sense. One makes a nest or makes a meal, but a bird or an insect lays its eggs.
- (d)bear — 'Bear' is used of giving birth to live young or of carrying something, as in 'bear a child' or 'bear the weight', and it does not take 'eggs' as its object.
A cloze item resting on the fixed collocation 'to lay eggs'.
All four verbs are ordinary words, so the item is decided entirely by which one English actually pairs with 'eggs'. It is worth keeping 'lay' and 'lie' apart while you are here, since 'lay' takes an object, as', while 'lie' takes none, as in 'lie down'. Only 'lay' can stand before 'eggs' at all.
- Laying eggs is the queen's whole function in the colony, and a well-fed queen can lay about 1,500 eggs a day during the spring build-up.
- 'Lay' takes an object and its past form is 'laid', while 'lie' takes no object and its past form is 'lay', which is why the two are so often confused.
- Confusing 'lay' with 'lie'.
- Choosing a verb that makes sense in isolation but is never used with the noun printed after the blank.
Asked as a cloze item in which only one of four ordinary verbs forms a standard pairing with the noun that follows.
No directly related past PYQ was found.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Choose the word that fits — The turtle comes ashore each year to _____ its eggs in the sand.
- (a)bear
- (b)lay
- (c)make
- (d)hatch
Answer(b) lay — the standard verb for producing eggs.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Choose the word that fits — After three weeks the eggs began to _____.
- (a)lay
- (b)bear
- (c)hatch
- (d)make
Answer(c) hatch — hatching is what the eggs do when the young emerge.