According to new research of Prof.Randolf Menzel from the Free University in Berlin，th

e popular image of bees as the ultimate hard workers was inaccurate.“Al—though we see bees buzzing around tirelessly in spring and summer，the common belief in a bee’s busy nature is based on a misconception，” he said.People only really see bees when they’re out flying，or they look at a colony of bees and see thousands of them buzzing around.They don't get to pick them out as individuals.The professor，who this month won a German Zoological Society award for his work on bees，added that bees compensated for their apparent laziness with high intelligence，advanced memory skills and an ability to learn quickly.

The suggestion that bees were not pulling their weight met with skepticism from British beekeepers.Glyn Davies，the President of the British Beekeepers Association，said that bees were not lazy but efficient，“At any particular stage in its energy by doing nothing.Each bee has a unit of life energy and the faster it works，the faster it dies.They are being very wise and perhaps humans should try to follow their example instead of running about like headless chickens.”

The idea of the busy bee is several thousand years old.One current author who has nothing but admiration for the bee is Paul Theroux，the novelist and part-time beekeeper.“I have never seen a bee sleeping.My bees never stop working，”he said.Mr.

Theroux added that Prof.Menzel’s research could have been affected by his national origins.“Perhaps in comparison to the German rate of work，the bee does look lazy，”he said.

Few people think that the busy bee idea will go away，despite the efforts of Prof.Menzel.It seems absurd to apply the word“lazy”to a colony of creatures capable of producing something so extraordinary as honeycomb.The truth is that bees give us an inferiority complex that is not entirely unjustified.In fact，the worship of bees seems to be undergoing a renaissance.IBM recently ran a series of ads drawing on the“waggle dance”of bees，telling businessmen to“make your business waggle.”

36.Prof.Randolf Menzel’s latest research .

A.challenges our knowledge of the relations among bees

B.confirms our knowledge of the relations among bees

C.challenges our perception of the nature of bees

D.confirms our perception of the nature of bees

37.Prof.Randolf Menzel would disagree that .

A.bees are hard working

B.bees are quick learners

C.bees have intelligence

D.bees have good memory

38.According to Glyn Davies，what should we learn from bees？

A.How to work faster.

B.How to live longer.

C.How to cooperate with each other.

D.How to improve work efficiency.

39.It could be inferred from Paragraph 3 that the Germans .

A.are easily affected by their national characters

B.are extremely busy and hard working

C.have many things in common with bees

D.tend to look down upon lazy people

40.The IBM ads in the passage are used to .

A.show the popularity of the idea of busy bees

B.emphasize the negative image of busy bees

C.initiate public discussions on the busy bee image

D.question the comparison of busy bees to humans