2021年12月27日托福阅读真题+题目+答案：Honeybees and Bumblebees

2021年12月27日托福阅读真题+题目+答案：Honeybees and Bumblebees

Most wild plants and agricultural crops need insects for pollination. When hungry insects forage (search for sweet nectar and pollen), they inadvertently get dusted with the sticky male pollen and transfer it to the female part of the plant to create seeds--and thus vegetables, fruits, and grains. More than a third of all human food is thought to depend on insect pollination.

The honeybee, Apis mellifera, is overwhelmingly the most widely managed pollinator of crops, and many farmers are entirely unaware that there are other insects that are capable of pollination. The economic value of pollination is often credited entirely to honeybees and is often used to justify public subsidizing of honeybee keeping. Even the scientific literature is frequently faulty in this respect. For example, honeybees were promoted for pollination of alfalfa up until the 1980s even though Henslow noted in 1867 that honeybees were incapable of tripping (setting off) the mechanism that allows a flower to open and makes pollination possible. In 1909 it was discovered that other species of bee, notably those belonging to the Megachilidae, did trip the mechanism and provide efficient pollination, but through a combination of inertia and poor advice to farmers, it was not until the 1970s that use of Megachilidae for alfalfa pollination became widespread.

There is now growing appreciation that there are alternatives to the honeybee, and that in some situations the alternatives may be better. Honeybees do have a number of advantages as pollinators: they form vast colonies that can pollinate large areas of crops; there is a substantial body of expertise in the management of these colonies; and they provide honey.。。。。余下托福阅读真题原文省略！

1. The word "inadvertently" in the passage is closest in meaning to

A. regularly

B. unintentionally

C. eventually

D. predictably

2. The word "overwhelmingly" in the passage is closest in meaning to

A traditionally

B by far

C without doubt

D increasingly

3. According to paragraph 2, many farmers mistakenly believe that honeybees are

A. the most widely used pollinators of crops

B. publicly subsidized as pollinators of crops

C. the only insects that can be used as pollinators

D. incapable of efficiently pollinating alfalfa

。。。。余下托福阅读真题题目省略！

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