A real-length academic passage with ten True/False/Not Given questions, the hardest IELTS Reading question type, fully explained.
📗 Passage — Urban Beekeeping
Read the passage, then answer True / False / Not Given for each statement.
In the past two decades, beekeeping has moved from rural farms into the heart of major cities. Rooftops in London, New York, and Paris now host hives producing honey sold locally, and municipal governments have begun actively encouraging the practice as part of broader biodiversity strategies. Proponents argue that urban environments, perhaps surprisingly, can support bee populations better than intensively farmed rural land, since city parks and gardens offer a wider variety of flowering plants across more of the year, without the pesticide exposure common in monoculture farming.
However, some ecologists have raised concerns that the rapid growth of urban beekeeping may not be an unambiguous good. A city can only support a limited number of colonies before competition for nectar and pollen becomes intense, potentially harming wild native bee species — which are typically solitary and less able to compete with the honeybee's cooperative foraging behaviour. Several studies in European cities have found that areas with a high density of managed honeybee hives showed a measurable decline in wild bee diversity, suggesting that well-intentioned urban beekeeping initiatives could inadvertently threaten the very biodiversity they aim to support.
Despite this, most researchers agree that the solution is not to abandon urban beekeeping but to manage it more carefully — capping hive density per area and pairing new apiaries with plantings that expand the total food supply, rather than simply redistributing a fixed one among more colonies.
Q1. Urban beekeeping has only recently become common in major cities.
TRUE — the passage states it has moved into cities "in the past two decades."
Q2. City environments always have fewer flowering plants than farmland.
FALSE — the passage says cities can offer "a wider variety of flowering plants across more of the year."
Q3. Rural farmland typically involves higher pesticide exposure for bees than cities do.
TRUE — stated directly as a contrast in paragraph 1.
Q4. Municipal governments have banned beekeeping in most major cities.
FALSE — governments have "begun actively encouraging the practice."
Q5. Wild native bee species are usually more cooperative foragers than honeybees.
FALSE — the passage says wild bees are "typically solitary," the opposite of cooperative.
Q6. Every city studied has shown a decline in wild bee diversity due to urban beekeeping.
NOT GIVEN — the passage says "several studies... in European cities," not every city.
Q7. The passage suggests urban beekeeping should be abandoned due to its risks.
FALSE — researchers say the solution is "not to abandon" it but to manage it more carefully.
Q8. Capping hive density is mentioned as one possible management strategy.
TRUE — directly stated in the final paragraph.
Q9. The number of research studies on this topic is stated precisely in the passage.
NOT GIVEN — "several studies" is not a precise number.
Q10. Pairing new apiaries with new plantings could increase the total food supply available to bees.
TRUE — stated as an alternative to simply redistributing a fixed supply.
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Strategy note
Notice how many answers here are NOT GIVEN rather than FALSE — that distinction (contradicted vs. simply absent from the text) is exactly what Lesson 8 covers.