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【阅读理解】Reading: The Beekeeper Who Lost Nearly Everything
In 2016, Li Guodong was 44 years old and kept 180 beehives on a ridge in Pinggu, northeast of Beijing.
He had inherited the apiary from his father, who kept only three hives.
Li's hands had lost their sensitivity to bee stings, so a sting felt like a mosquito bite.
By 2018, his honey sold for 180 yuan a jar to customers in Beijing, Shanghai and Singapore.
The income paid for his daughter's tuition and a second-hand truck.
Then a series of disasters struck: a late frost in 2019 killed peach blossoms, a new pesticide weakened the bees, and an invasive mite spread from neighbouring provinces.
By the winter of 2020, he had lost 96 of his 180 hives.
He stopped talking to anyone except his bees.
He moved 300 kilometres north to a cooler plateau in Hebei, chasing the last clean forage.
He learned to overwinter his colonies in insulated sheds, a trick from a beekeeper in Inner Mongolia.
His wife, Zhao Meihua, took a job at a hotel, and their marriage entered a quiet resistance.
By 2022, Li kept only 60 hives, but each was healthier than before.
A young agricultural officer, Chen Yu, 29, began visiting monthly and taught him to treat the apiary holistically.
She told him, 'The old model was to outdo your neighbour. The new model is to outlast the climate.'
Li began keeping a chronological record of every swarm, loss and jar sold, which ran to 340 pages by 2024.
Last June, the author stood with him in a flowering field at 6 a.m., listening to the humming bees.
Li lifted a frame and showed the queen walking slowly.
A bee landed on his cheek, and he did not move, saying, 'They know me.'
Behind them, Zhao Meihua was loading jars into the truck and waved.
Li closed the hive gently and asked if the clover would come back this year.
Questions
1. How many beehives did Li Guodong have in 2016?
A. 60 B. 180 C. 96 D. 300
2. What happened to Li's hives by the winter of 2020?
A. He lost 96 hives. B. He moved 300 hives. C. He sold 180 hives. D. He bought 60 hives.
3. What does the word 'outlast' in paragraph 12 most likely mean?
A. To defeat quickly B. To endure longer than C. To copy exactly D. To move away from
4. What can be inferred about Li's attitude towards Chen Yu's advice?
A. He argued against it strongly. B. He accepted it immediately. C. He was doubtful at first but listened. D. He ignored it completely.
5. Which of the following best serves as a title for the passage?
A. The Life of a Young Geneticist B. How to Keep Bees Successfully C. The Rise of a Honey Empire D. A Beekeeper's Long Struggle