When bees build a new hive composed of hexagonal honeycomb “rooms,”

I was stuck between A and D however I don't think D properly "concludes" the paragraphs arguments.

May I have a more detailed explanation? Didn't understand the logic behind A.

Hi,

Can anyone explain why C is ruled out here, A & C infers the same logic.

Your help is much appreciated.

I think the problem is with the word can, whereas the problem talks about how many should be built.

The first sentence says that " When the bees build new hive , composed of rooms , they must build precisely the correct number of rooms to house the population of bees." The phrase " correct number of rooms" is important here.
Hence option A can be inferred. It also says that from the bees' hive building behaviour , the correct number of rooms can be determined.
VeritasKarishma GMATNinja Is my explanation correct ?

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When bees build a new hive composed of hexagonal honeycomb “rooms,” they must build precisely the correct number of rooms to house the population of bees that will immediately inhabit the new hive. If there were too few rooms, some younger bees would be displaced and would freeze or starve outside the hive. If there were too many rooms, some bees would instinctively fight to the death to conquer the extra space.

Which of the following conclusions can correctly be inferred from the paragraph above?

A. From the bees' hive-building behavior, one could theoretically determine the correct number of rooms to be built for a particular colony of bees.
We can derive some kind of formula for the number of rooms given the population of bees and number of bees in a room.

B. Trees on which hives are built have no properties that can affect the number of rooms of the hive built on them.
Out of scope , bees hive can be built on other places

C. Bees learn how many rooms can be built in a hive from experience.
Difficult to eliminate but as compare to option A but option A looks better.Moreover nothing in stems to infer option C

D. Building too many rooms in the hive would kill bees more quickly than building too few.
Rate of Killing is not discussed in the stem.

E. Builder bees determine the number of rooms to be built by the chemical scent of individual resident bees.
No mention of Builder fees in the stem -out of scope.

Can someone pls give a better reason for selecting A
I selected C thinking that it suggests that they know from their past experience what happened when they built fewer/extra rooms and thus seek to build exact no. of rooms and accordingly make a hive

Hello, GDT. I think you fell into an assumption trap, easy to do with Critical Reasoning questions. My take on each answer:


The passage tells us in the first line that bees must build precisely the correct number of rooms to house the population of bees that will immediately inhabit the new hive. Notice that absolute in must, or else there will be problems, according to the rest of the passage. Thus, if I were to come across data on the number of bees in a particular colony and noticed that some workers had departed to begin constructing a new hive, I could reason that there would be a matching number of rooms for the number of bees in the overall colony. This is a strong contender as the correct answer.


We are not interested in trees, but in the hive-building tendencies of bees. If we begin to take trees into account, then it is hard to see where to draw the line: mosses that can grow on the trees, other insects, the general climate of the area, etc.


The ability could be innate, for all we know. The passage simply does not provide enough information for us to determine this with certainty.


No such comparison is made in the passage. You might go out on a limb and say that displacement, freezing, and starvation in the too few scenario would take longer than a fight to the death in the too many, but that is reading into the passage too much. Perhaps displacement in times of prime hive-building times spells almost certain death to the bees by predators, and that could come about quickly. We simply do not know, and we can only speculate.


This answer is similar to (C). Whether by experience, chemical scent, or some other mechanism, the bees exhibit a certain hive-building behavior that is described in the passage, nothing more. If anything, I would hope that encountering this answer would make you doubt that (C) was any better, allowing you to free up some space and go for (A).

I hope that helps. If you have further questions, I would be happy to address them.

- Andrew

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