Use of English - Multiple Choice

Urban Beekeeping

In many large cities, urban beekeeping has moved from being a niche hobby to a practice that municipalities now take (0) SERIOUSLY. What once seemed a quaint eccentricity is increasingly regarded as a practical response to concerns about biodiversity, food systems and environmental awareness. Advocates point (1) .......... that rooftop hives can thrive in cities, where parks, balconies and roadside plantings often provide a surprisingly varied supply of nectar. Critics, however, have (2) .......... doubts about whether encouraging honeybees in dense urban areas truly benefits wild pollinators, some of which may already be under pressure. The debate has therefore come to (3) .......... on a broader question: whether well-intentioned environmental projects always produce the outcomes their supporters anticipate. Even so, many city authorities remain keen to back schemes that also have symbolic value, since they can help bring abstract ecological issues (4) .......... life for residents. Schools, in particular, have embraced beekeeping as a way of making science lessons more immediate and less confined to theory. Pupils who might otherwise struggle to engage often rise (5) .......... the challenge when they are given direct responsibility for living creatures. For that reason alone, supporters argue, the educational case for urban hives is hard to (6) .......... aside. Whether the practice will become a permanent fixture or merely a passing trend remains to be seen, but for now it has clearly (7) .......... a chord with a public increasingly alert to environmental decline. What matters next is that enthusiasm be matched (8) .......... careful research rather than sentiment alone.