1 . Honeybees are in trouble. While they’ re crucial for promoting biodiversity and producing food for healthy human diets, honeybees face many threats, including habitat loss, climate change, air pollution and disease-causing organisms.

But now, there’s hope for helping honeybees fight back against one of the many stressors they face, a deadly infectious disease known as American foulbrood. To fight the disease, the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved for use the world’s first honeybee vaccine (疫苗), developed by Dalan Animal Health.

Bacteria called Paenibacillus larvae cause American foulbrood, which kills honeybees while they are in the pupal (蛹的) or pre-pupal stage. Until now, there was no “safe and sustainable” way to prevent American foulbrood. The only treatment involved antibiotics (抗生素), which are expensive, have limited effectiveness and take lots of time and energy for beekeepers to apply. To stop the spread, beekeepers are often forced to burn infected bees. That makes the vaccine a game changer.

“Our vaccine is a breakthrough in protecting honeybees,” says Annette Kleiser, CEO of Dalan Animal Health. “We are ready to change how we care for insects, impacting food production on a global level.”

Beekeepers will mix the vaccine, which contains dead P. larvae bacteria cells, into the food that worker bees eat. Then, when the worker bees produce their milky royal jelly (蜂王浆), the queen will eat it and the vaccine. Then, the vaccine will protect her developing offspring from the disease.

Under a conditional license from the USDA, Dalan Animal Health now plans to distribute limited amounts of the vaccine to commercial beekeepers. From there, they hope to offer it for sale throughout the U.S. sometime this year.

The federal agriculture agency awards conditional licenses to products that meet an emergency, situation, limited market, local situation or special circumstance. The USDA requires products that receive these types of licenses to be pure and safe, and have a reasonable expectation of effectiveness. Generally, conditional licenses come with restrictions and cover a limited period of time. Once that period ends, the agency evaluates the product’s effectiveness to determine whether to renew the conditional license or award a regular product license.

1. What’s the function of the first paragraph?

A．To stress the importance of honeybees.

B．To lead to the topic of the passage.

C．To list the threats honeybees face.

D．To arouse readers’ interest.

2. Why is the vaccine called a game changer?

A．Because it has changed the way we care for insects.

B．Because it’s the only treatment for American foulbrood.

C．Because it breaks through the limitations of the former treatment.

D．Because the previous treatment has no effectiveness.

3. What does the “developing offspring” refer to in Paragraph 5?

A．Queen bees.	B．Worker bees.
C．Adult bees.	D．Young bees.

4. What do we know about “conditional licenses” in the last two paragraphs?

A．They promote the commercial success of honeybee vaccine.

B．They guarantee the full effectiveness of products.

C．They can be renewed with no strings attached.

D．They are in effect within a period of time.