KSEEB 8th English The Bees Poem Lesson Notes Summary Questions and Answers
Pre-reading task:
(a) Have you tasted honey?
Answer:
Yes, I have tasted honey.
(b) How do bees collect honey?
Answer:
Bees collect nectar from the flowers and transform them into honey.
Textbook Questions and Answers
I. Let’s read and respond:
Following are statements drawn from the poem in a jumbled order.
Rearrange them in the right order:
a. The poor bees are like porters crowding in with heavy burdens at the narrow gate.
b. The bees knead up the honey.
c. They build their hives with roofs of gold.
d. By nature,’ they are very sincere and they serve their master and thus set an example to human beings.
e. They share their work and they are very professional in their work like soldiers and merchants.
f. All the bees deliver their goods and serve the lazy drone.
g. The honey is brought to the royal tent of the emperor.
h. The soldier bees armed with their stings suck honey from the velvet buds.
Answer:
- – d,
- – e,
- – h,
- – g,
- – c,
- – b,
- – a,
- – f
II. Appreciation
A. Answer the following in one or two sentences each:
Question 1.
What is the unique quality of bees?
Answer:
The unique quality of bees is that they operate in a communal way, the fixed element or the aim being obedience. It is like a well ordered kingdom with demarcations for the various jobs along with a king and officers of sorts. They have magistrates, merchants soldiers, masons, ordinary citizens, humble labourers, judges, executioners and unproductive drones, each doing their part in the prime job of making honey.
Question 2.
How do the bees serve as an example to people?
Answer:
By being sincere in serving their master and being obedient the bees set an example to people.
Question 3.
How is the work distributed among the bees?
Answer:
The work is well distributed among the bees in the hive. They have a king, a magistrate, merchants, soldiers, masons, ordinary citizens, porters, and executors. All of them discharge their duties sincerely.
B. Answer the following in four or five sentences each:
Question 1.
How does the poet describe the duty consciousness of the bees?
Answer:
The poet talks about the responsibilities that the bees shoulder very sincerely. The king, magistrate, soldiers, workers, ordinary citizens and the executors discharge their duties and responsibilities systematically and very professionally.
Question 2.
Mention the different types of bees according to the nature of their work.
Answer:
According to the nature of their work, the top rung in the hierarchy is held by the king who is ever busy surveying the hive. He is followed by the magistrate who corrects those at home, soldiers armed with a sting guard the hive, workers like merchants gather nectar, the ordinary citizens make honey, masons build golden roofs and the executof discharges his duty mercilessly against lazy drones.
Question 3.
How does the poet describe the drone?
Answer:
The poet describes the drone as a ‘lazy yawning’ drone. While the whole hive is buzzing with activities, the drone spends it’s time relaxing. Therefore, it is promptly sent to the executor.
C. Fill in the blanks of the following sentences:
1. The poet describes the bees as kings and officers because all the bees carry out their duties with utmost sincerity and professionally as if it has been officially entrusted to them.
2. The poet is sympathetic towards some of the bees because they are the ones who toil more. Some wander far to bring nectar, others knead to make honey, while others build golden roofs.
III. Find out the meanings of the following words from dictionary:
- magistrates – an official who acts as a judge in the lower courts.
- venture-(n) – a project or an undertaking especially a commercial one involving a risk of failure.
(v) to dare to go somewhere dangerous or unpleasant, - masons – a person who builds in or works with stone,
- mechanic – a person skilled in handling or repairing machines,
- porters – a person whose job is carrying people’s luggage and other loads.
- burdens – a load, usually a heavy one.
- surly – bad tempered and rude
- executors – a person who is appointed by a king or other high officials to carry out the instructions.
IV. Browse the encyclopedia or internet to find out about the life of the ants. Some clues are given below.
Different types of ants – Class activity
Team work – Class activity
Division of labour – Class activity
V. Let’s work on our own:
A Collect a picture/model of a beehive – Student activity
Collect information on the characteristic features of the queen bee, worker bee, soldier bee and drone.
A. Queen bee – The term queen bee is typically used to refer to an adult, mated female that lives in a honey bee colony or hive; she is usually the mother of most, if not all, the bees in the hive. The queens are developed from larvae selected by worker bees and specially fed in order to become sexually mature. There is normally only one adult, mated queen in a hive.
The term “queen bee” can be more generally applied to any dominant reproductive female in a colony of a eusocial bee species other than honey bees.
Drone – Drones are male honey bees. They develop from eggs that have not been fertilized, and they cannot sting, since the worker bee’s stinger is a modified ovipositor (an egg laying organ). Drones never exhibit typical worker bee behaviours such as nectar and pollen gathering, nursing, or hive construction. Since the worker bee’s stinger is a modified ovipositor (an egg laying organ), the drones are defenseless and cannot defend the hive;
Soldier bee – Soldier bees are 30 per cent heavier than worker bees and make up just one per cent of the colony, whereas workers number around 10,000 per hive.
They have slightly smaller heads and thicker legs than the workers, which helps them to fight off their main enemies – the robber bee
However, despite being stingless and far smaller, soldier bees are able to fight-off single robber bee scouts. They fight by clamping their heads onto the wing of robber bees, preventing them from flying.
Worker bee – A Worker bee is any female eusocial bee that’lacks the full reproductive capacity of the colony ’s queen bee; under most circumstances, this is correlated to an increase in certain non- reproductive activities relative to a queen, as well. Worker bees occur in many bee species other than honey bees, but this is by far the most familiar colloquial use of the term.
Honey bee workers keep the hive temperature uniform in the critical brood area (where new bees are raised). Workers gather pollen into the pollen baskets on their back legs, to carry back to the hive where it is used as food for the developing brood. Pollen carried on their bodies may be carried to another flower where a small portion can rub off onto the pistil, resulting in cross pollination.
B. Class activity/students activity.
C. Write a short paragraph of 50 words on each of the following topics: Nutritious value of honey
Honey is a mixture of sugars and other compounds. With respect to carbo hydrates,honey is mainly fructose (about 38.5%) and glucose (about 31.0%), making . it similar to the synthetically produced inverted sugar syrup, which is approximately 48% fructose, 47% glucose, and 5% sucrose. Honey’s remaining carbohydrates include maltose, sucrose, and other complex carbohydrates.
As with all nutritive sweeteners, honey is mostly sugars and contains only trace amounts of vitamins or minerals. Honey also, contains tiny amounts of several compounds thought to function as antioxidants, including chrysin, pinobanksin, vitamin C, catalase, and pinocembrin. The specific composition of any batch of honey depends on the flowers available to the bees that produced the honey.
Medicinal value of honey: Historically, honey has been used by humans to treat a variety of ailments through topical application, but only , recently have the antiseptic and antibacterial properties of honey been chemically explained.
In Ayurveda, a 4000-year-old system originating from India, honey is considered to positively affect all three primitive material imbalances of the body.
Honey appears to be effective in killing drug resistant biofilms which are implicated ‘ in chronic rhinosinusitis.
Topical honey has been used successfully in a comprehensive treatment of diabetic ulcers when the patient cannot use topical antibiotics.
The pH of honey is commonly between 3.2 and 4.5 This relatively acidic pH level 1 prevents the growth of many bacteria.
Honey has also been used for centuries as a treatment for sore throats and coughs i and, according to recent research, may be an effective soothing agent for coughs.
Some studies suggest the topical use of honey may reduce odours, swelling, and scarring when used to treat wounds; it may I also prevent the dressing from sticking to the healing wound, to mast cells. This inhibits mast cell degranulation and thus reduces allergic reactions.
Beehive and wax
A beehive is an enclosed structure in which some honey bee species live and raise their young. Natural beehives are naturally occurring structures occupied by honeybee colonies, while domesticated honeybees live in man-made beehives, often in an apiaiy. These man-made structures are typically referred to as “beehives”… Natural beehive is comparable to a bird’s nest built with a purpose to protect the dweller.
The beehive’s internal structure is a densely- packed matrix of hexagonal cells made of beeswax, called a honeycomb. The bees use the cells to store food (honey and pollen) and to house the ‘brood’ (eggs, larvae, and pupae).
Artificial beehives serve two purposes: production of honey and pollination of nearby crops. Artificial hives are commonly transported so that bees can pollinate crops in other areas.
D. Student’s assignment
Additional Questions with Answers
I. Identify the figure of speech of the following.
- Where some like magistrates, correct at home – simile and personification
- Others like merchants, venture trade abroad – simile and personification
- Others like soldiers armed in their wings – simile and personification
- With pillage, they, with merry mirth bring home – alliteration
- Who busied in his majesty, surveys. – personification.
- The singing masons building roofs of gold – personification
- The civil citizens kneading up the honey – personification
- The poor mechanic porters crowding gates – personification
- The sad ey’d justice with his surly hum – personification.
- Delivering over to executors – personification
- The lazy yawning drone. -personification.
II. Match the following bees with the nature of their work: (matched)
- magistrate – corrects at home
- merchants – venture trade abroad
- soldiers – armed with stings
- empero – surveys the hive
- masons – build roofs of gold
- civil citizens – knead up honey
Glossary
Mirth – happiness and laughter.
III. Answer the following questions
Question 1.
“With pillage, they, with merry mirth bring home” explain this statement.
Answer:
It means that the honey bees who have stolen the nectar and pollen from the flowers have escaped and are flying back home with total excitement and happiness.
Question 2.
Why do you think that justice is addressed as sad eyed?
Answer:
Most of those who are brought to the magistrate for justice are none but the lazy drones. The fate of the drone is a known fact. The magistrate is also probably helpless, as justice has to be done therefore he is referred to as sad eyed.
The Bees Poem Summary in English
The hierarchy in a bee hive along with their characteristics is clearly depicted here; the bees also set an example about hard work and sincerity.
Honey bees operate in a communal way, where the one single fixed element is obedience. One can learn a lot about how to run a well-ordered. Kingdom from these creatures. They have a king surveying the hive and his officers of sorts. Some like magistrates dole out punishment; some venture forth for commerce like merchants; soldiers armed with stingers, pillage the summer flowers and bring home the booty – honey, to the royal tent; masons build gold roofs, ordinary citizens process the honey; humble labourers crowd at the narrow gates with their loads of honey; solemn judge hands over the lazy unproductive drones to the executioners.
From the above, it can be concluded that all the different elements work toward one common end cohesively. All of them fulfill their responsibilities sincerely and professionally, qualities which we humans have to learn and emulate. They set an outstanding example about the importance of hand work, obedience and a harmonious community living.