full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Marla Spivak: Why bees are disappearing

Unscramble the Blue Letters


Honeybees can be considered a super-organism, where the colony is the organism and it's comprised of 40,000 to 50,000 iiuvidndal bee orsanimgs. Now this society has no central authority. Nobody's in charge. So how they come to collective decisions, and how they allocate their tasks and divide their labor, how they communicate where the flowers are, all of their cclioelvte social behaviors are mindblowing. My personal favorite, and one that I've studied for many years, is their system of healthcare. So bees have soical healthcare. So in my lab, we study how bees keep themselves healthy. For example, we sutdy heigyne, where some bees are able to locate and weed out sick ivualdniids from the nest, from the colony, and it keeps the colony healthy. And more recently, we've been studying resins that bees collect from plants. So bees fly to some ptalns and they scrape these very, very sticky resins off the leaves, and they take them back to the nest where they cement them into the nest architecture where we call it propolis. We've found that propolis is a natural disinfectant. It's a naaturl antibiotic. It kllis off bacteria and molds and other germs within the colony, and so it bolsters the colony health and their social immunity. hanums have known about the peowr of poirlops since biblical tmeis. We've been harvesting propolis out of bee colonies for human medicine, but we didn't know how good it was for the bees. So honeybees have these remarkable natural defenses that have kept them healthy and thriving for over 50 million yares.

Open Cloze


Honeybees can be considered a super-organism, where the colony is the organism and it's comprised of 40,000 to 50,000 __________ bee _________. Now this society has no central authority. Nobody's in charge. So how they come to collective decisions, and how they allocate their tasks and divide their labor, how they communicate where the flowers are, all of their __________ social behaviors are mindblowing. My personal favorite, and one that I've studied for many years, is their system of healthcare. So bees have ______ healthcare. So in my lab, we study how bees keep themselves healthy. For example, we _____ _______, where some bees are able to locate and weed out sick ___________ from the nest, from the colony, and it keeps the colony healthy. And more recently, we've been studying resins that bees collect from plants. So bees fly to some ______ and they scrape these very, very sticky resins off the leaves, and they take them back to the nest where they cement them into the nest architecture where we call it propolis. We've found that propolis is a natural disinfectant. It's a _______ antibiotic. It _____ off bacteria and molds and other germs within the colony, and so it bolsters the colony health and their social immunity. ______ have known about the _____ of ________ since biblical _____. We've been harvesting propolis out of bee colonies for human medicine, but we didn't know how good it was for the bees. So honeybees have these remarkable natural defenses that have kept them healthy and thriving for over 50 million _____.

Solution


  1. natural
  2. power
  3. humans
  4. plants
  5. propolis
  6. hygiene
  7. individual
  8. times
  9. study
  10. years
  11. individuals
  12. collective
  13. organisms
  14. kills
  15. social

Original Text


Honeybees can be considered a super-organism, where the colony is the organism and it's comprised of 40,000 to 50,000 individual bee organisms. Now this society has no central authority. Nobody's in charge. So how they come to collective decisions, and how they allocate their tasks and divide their labor, how they communicate where the flowers are, all of their collective social behaviors are mindblowing. My personal favorite, and one that I've studied for many years, is their system of healthcare. So bees have social healthcare. So in my lab, we study how bees keep themselves healthy. For example, we study hygiene, where some bees are able to locate and weed out sick individuals from the nest, from the colony, and it keeps the colony healthy. And more recently, we've been studying resins that bees collect from plants. So bees fly to some plants and they scrape these very, very sticky resins off the leaves, and they take them back to the nest where they cement them into the nest architecture where we call it propolis. We've found that propolis is a natural disinfectant. It's a natural antibiotic. It kills off bacteria and molds and other germs within the colony, and so it bolsters the colony health and their social immunity. Humans have known about the power of propolis since biblical times. We've been harvesting propolis out of bee colonies for human medicine, but we didn't know how good it was for the bees. So honeybees have these remarkable natural defenses that have kept them healthy and thriving for over 50 million years.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
world war 5
crop production 2
bee pollination 2
tomato growers 2
flowerless landscape 2
dysfunctional food 2
food system 2
million hives 2
stopped planting 2
cover crops 2
flowering plants 2
agricultural food 2
good nutrition 2
plant flowers 2
individual actions 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
dysfunctional food system 2

Important Words


  1. allocate
  2. antibiotic
  3. architecture
  4. authority
  5. bacteria
  6. bee
  7. bees
  8. behaviors
  9. biblical
  10. bolsters
  11. call
  12. cement
  13. central
  14. charge
  15. collect
  16. collective
  17. colonies
  18. colony
  19. communicate
  20. comprised
  21. considered
  22. decisions
  23. defenses
  24. disinfectant
  25. divide
  26. favorite
  27. flowers
  28. fly
  29. germs
  30. good
  31. harvesting
  32. health
  33. healthcare
  34. healthy
  35. honeybees
  36. human
  37. humans
  38. hygiene
  39. immunity
  40. individual
  41. individuals
  42. kills
  43. lab
  44. labor
  45. leaves
  46. locate
  47. medicine
  48. million
  49. mindblowing
  50. molds
  51. natural
  52. nest
  53. organism
  54. organisms
  55. personal
  56. plants
  57. power
  58. propolis
  59. remarkable
  60. resins
  61. scrape
  62. sick
  63. social
  64. society
  65. sticky
  66. studied
  67. study
  68. studying
  69. system
  70. tasks
  71. thriving
  72. times
  73. weed
  74. years