Honeybee Society Honeybee colonies are essentially societies of females. In a hive of perhaps 20,000 bees, only a few hundred will be male bees, called drones. [▇]They are around only in the spring or summerlong enough to rise to treetop level in a comet-like swarm, chasing after one of the queen bees that have assembled from various hives at a mating site. [▇]Of the many drones assembled, only 10 to 15 will actually mate with a queen during one of her mating flights. [▇] Each drone that is successful dies in the process, however, and a similar fate awaits drones that aren't successful; once mating is done, they will be expelled from their hives or killed. [▇] The word “expelled” in the passage is closest in meaning to •A.forced from•B.carried from•C.left by•D.guided fromIt can be inferred from paragraph 1 that drones are around only in spring or summer because •A.they are born in these seasons mating•B.mating flights occur in these seasons•C.they are expelled from the hive in these seasons•D.they are unable to survive in colder seasonsAccording to paragraph 1, all of the following are true about honeybee drones EXCEPT: •A.They are a small percentage of the bees in a hive.•B.They die in the process if they mate with a queen bee.•C.They are accepted back in the hive if they fail to mate.•D.They swarm at mating sites to chase after a queen bee.Look at the four squares[▇]that indicate where the following sentence could be added to the passage. Where would the sentence best fit? Lacking the body parts to collect nectar and pollen, they have no function in the community once the opportunity to mate has passed. The week of mating flights prepares the queen for a lifetime of prodigious egg laying; she will produce up to 2,000 fertile eggs a day for years. Nearly all of the offspring that hatch from these eggs are female; they are the hive's worker bees; and they are well named, for it is they who will maintain the hive, forage for food, store the food away, care for newly laid eggs, and more. It is they who will do everything for the colony, in other words, except lay eggs and mate with the queen. Over their brief adult lives of perhaps six weeks, every worker bee takes on, in a predictable order, nearly all the worker tasks that the hive has to offer. For the first three days of her life, a worker is primarily a cleaner of the cells that the bee larvae (immature, wormlike bees) are stored in. As the days pass, she becomes primarily a larvae feeder, then a hive construction worker, then an entrance guard and food storer, and finally a forager, going out to secure nectar, pollen, and water for the colony. Within this structure, however, a worker's life is one of surprising flexibility. After becoming a construction worker, for example, she still engages in some cell cleaning; and...
