The Bees In My Backyard Class 8 English ICSE Extra Question And Answers
- Where did the author live? How did the author enjoy different birds from his balcony?
Ans: The author lived in a building called Jaldarshan on Napean Sea Road in Mumbai. The author would spent hours watching sunbirds, tailor birds, magpie robins, koels, sparrows, crows, rose-ringed parakeets, and pigeons.
2. What does he experience in the ber tree and peepal tree and other wild plants?
Ans: He explains has he overlooked from his balcony he saw the venerable ber tree and clutch of peepal trees that swarmed with life.
3. What would the author experience at Jaldarshan garden?
Ans: The author gives a vivid description of his experience at the Jaldomarshan garden. At the dawn and dusk, there would commence a competition between the virtual army of pipistrelles and swifts, dive-bombing airspace over the author’s garden, consuming insects that grew fat on the plenty Malabar Hills. Further, when the ambience would have turned almost dark and most human residents would be engrossed in the television sets, fruit bats would come visiting to feast on thousands of figs and “false badam” fruit. Every few years, a family of barn owls raised its family in a cosy little niche, twenty meters up in our cliff wall.
4. When it was darker what would the author notice?
Ans: When it was darker the author would notice that the fruit bats would come visiting to the garden to feast on thousands of figs and ‘false badam’ fruit.
5. In spite of being highly populated and polluted how would the author never be bored?
Ans: In spite of being highly populated and polluted the author never got bored in Mumbai because even at the days when birds where not visible the author would entertain himself by watching butterflies, beetles, spiders, grasshoppers, ants, wasps, and bees. In the centre of the Jaldarshan garden grew a cicada, one of the most beautiful palms the author had ever seen.
6. What is the lifelong regret of the author? How does he reflect that with example?
Ans: The lifelong regret of the author is that he knows very less about botany. He reflects that by giving the example of flowers.
7. How do flowers attract insects to make pollination possible?
Ans: Flowers use texture to attract insects to make pollination possible. Flowers manage to arrange their cells such a way as to provide visiting insects with surfaces that feel variously like cotton, silk, wool, and velvet. Some even use kind of “oily gloss” that provides their petals with a sheen that attracts insects – butterflies “smell” and “taste” flowers with their feet.
8. Why does the author like the sound of the insects’ wings? What does the author say about bees and Apis mellifera?
Ans: The the author did like the sound of the insect wings because it gave him soothing effect. It’s a calming, hypnotic sound.
On Sunday while sitting in the garden, the author suddenly heard the buzz of bees and followed several individuals Apis mellifera as they went about their chores. They were sisters, gathering food stocks for the hive and the author guessed they would around be three weeks old. They sucked honey using their proboscis, but they also managed to collect pollen that they would transport back to the hive in bristly “baskets” on their hind legs.
9. How according to the narrator we have much to learn from nature?
Ans: According to the author we have much to learn from nature. He says “We know very little, for instances, about the natural history of honeybees in the wild, despite the fact that we domesticated them for ones”. The author further asks us to learn the skill of social development from them, their strategies to survive the toughest situation, their spirit of working for the welfare of the community, their skills of communication through the medium of dance.
10. What complex questions did the author ask which are very interesting and yet be resolved?
Ans: The complex yet interesting questions asked by the author which are yet to be resolved where why did the bees discern the colour red, why is that worker
bees continue to work for the welfare of the colony, feeding the larvae though
they will never be able to reproduce young, how did bees learn to communicate
with each other using the medium of dance, hoe does bees know what to do
collectively to raise or lower the temperature in their hives.
11. How at the end of the text the author reflects about the effects of nature or him?
Ans: By the end of the story the author reflects the effect on him by nature by saying that the sight of the Jaldarshan Garden gave him the opportunity to look inwards and spend time on things we seem to have left too little time for- the sweetness of water, the softness of the breeze, the sound of birds singing, the freshness of new flowers, and the hum of bees.
12. How far do you think nature is mysterious and unknown in many ways? Discuss with reference from the text?
Ans: The nature is mysterious and unknown in many ways, it has its own diversities.
The mysterious concept of nature is portrayed by the fruit bats visiting to feast on thousands of figs and “false badam” fruit. It is further put forward by the flowers magical spell to attracts insects for pollination and the complex yet interesting gesture of the bees.