Why do the bees fan their wings over the nectar?
Basic Understanding of Spoken English · TELPAS Grades 4–5 listening. The correct answer, and the reasoning behind it.
Reporting category 2: understand the main points and important details of spoken stories and informational passages, about everyday life and school subjects.
Listen to the teacher talk about honeybees. Then answer the questions.
How Bees Make Honey
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Mr. Barrera: Yesterday, some of you asked me where honey comes from. The answer is a busy team of honeybees, and making honey takes a lot of work.
Mr. Barrera: First, worker bees fly from flower to flower and sip a sweet liquid called nectar. They store it in a special part of their body called a honey stomach. When a bee's honey stomach is full, it flies back to the hive.
Mr. Barrera: Inside the hive, the bee passes the nectar to other bees. They put it into tiny wax cells, the little six-sided rooms of the honeycomb. At first, the nectar is thin and watery. So the bees fan their wings over it, again and again, to dry it out. Slowly, the nectar turns thick and sticky. Now it is honey.
Mr. Barrera: Last, the bees cover each cell with a lid of wax to keep the honey fresh. They will eat it in the winter, when there are no flowers.
Mr. Barrera: Here is a surprising fact. In its whole life, one honeybee makes only about one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey. So the next time you eat honey, think about how many bees it took!
The question
Choose the best answer.
Why do the bees fan their wings over the nectar?
- To keep the hive cool in the summer
- To call other bees over to the cells
- To make the wax lids for the cells
- To dry the nectar so it turns thickCorrect answer
Why “To dry the nectar so it turns thick” is correct
This is a detail question about cause and effect. Mr. Barrera says the nectar starts out thin and watery, so the bees fan their wings "to dry it out," and it slowly turns thick and sticky. The student needs to hold on to the reason the speaker gives, not a fact they may know from elsewhere.
Why the other answers are wrong
- To keep the hive cool in the summer — Bees really do fan to cool a hive, but Mr. Barrera does not say that; he says the fanning dries the nectar.
- To call other bees over to the cells — The bees already work together at the cells; fanning is not described as a signal.
- To make the wax lids for the cells — The wax lids are the last step and are not made by fanning.
Practice more of this
More listening practice for Grades 4–5, or see the TELPAS practice test for 4th and 5th grade.
This is an independent study resource. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the Texas Education Agency or the official TELPAS program. All questions here are original practice material written to match the published test design.