--- title: Bees, worms and soil: the hidden helpers of our food — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Bees, worms and soil: the hidden helpers of our food», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Without that delivery the blossom would never become an apple. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/291-bees-worms-and-soil-the-hidden-helpers-of-our-food/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / Bees, worms and soil: the hidden helpe… # Bees, worms and soil: the hidden helpers of our food Lesson 291 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 20 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/biology/291-bees-worms-and-soil-the-hidden-helpers-of-our-food/). - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/291-bees-worms-and-soil-the-hidden-helpers-of-our-food/1/) — Without that delivery the blossom would never become an apple. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/291-bees-worms-and-soil-the-hidden-helpers-of-our-food/2/) — Under your feet another team is working. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/291-bees-worms-and-soil-the-hidden-helpers-of-our-food/3/) — Earthworms pull dead leaves down, eat them with soil and leave rich worm casts, while their tunnels let air and rain sink in. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/291-bees-worms-and-soil-the-hidden-helpers-of-our-food/4/) — A single handful of healthy soil holds more living things than there are people on Earth: bacteria, fungi, tiny animals and roots, all turning dead stuff into food for plants. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/291-bees-worms-and-soil-the-hidden-helpers-of-our-food/5/) — Farmers have other helpers too: ladybirds that eat aphids and barn owls that hunt mice. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/291-bees-worms-and-soil-the-hidden-helpers-of-our-food/6/) — When people forget these helpers, things go wrong, as in the 1930s Dust Bowl, when bare ploughed soil simply blew away. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/291-bees-worms-and-soil-the-hidden-helpers-of-our-food/7/) — Bees carry pollen from flower to flower so that fruit can form, and about one in every three mouthfuls we eat depends on pollinators such as bees. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/291-bees-worms-and-soil-the-hidden-helpers-of-our-food/8/) — Apples, almonds, strawberries and coffee all need pollinators. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/291-bees-worms-and-soil-the-hidden-helpers-of-our-food/9/) — Honeybees are kept by beekeepers and are not close to dying out, but many wild bees and other pollinators are declining because of lost flowers, pesticides, disease and climate change. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/291-bees-worms-and-soil-the-hidden-helpers-of-our-food/10/) — Wild bees such as bumblebees do a large share of pollination. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/291-bees-worms-and-soil-the-hidden-helpers-of-our-food/11/) — Honey is made by many worker bees from the nectar they collect; it takes thousands of flower visits and weeks of work to fill a jar. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/291-bees-worms-and-soil-the-hidden-helpers-of-our-food/12/) — In parts of Sichuan in China, after heavy pesticide use and the loss of bees, workers pollinated pear trees by hand with brushes, which is slow and costly. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/291-bees-worms-and-soil-the-hidden-helpers-of-our-food/13/) — Every spring about two thirds of America's managed honeybee hives are carried on lorries to pollinate California's almond farms, one of the biggest pollination events in the world. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/291-bees-worms-and-soil-the-hidden-helpers-of-our-food/14/) — Earthworms eat dead leaves and soil and leave rich casts, their tunnels let air and water into the soil, and Charles Darwin wrote a whole book about worms. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/291-bees-worms-and-soil-the-hidden-helpers-of-our-food/15/) — Cutting a worm in half usually kills it; sometimes the head end heals and survives, but the tail end cannot grow a new head, and it is cruel to try. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/291-bees-worms-and-soil-the-hidden-helpers-of-our-food/16/) — A handful of healthy soil holds more living things than there are people on Earth, and it takes hundreds of years to make a few centimetres of soil. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/291-bees-worms-and-soil-the-hidden-helpers-of-our-food/17/) — Compost is old food and plants broken down by microbes, fungi and worms into rich soil, and it gets warm in the middle as the microbes work. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/291-bees-worms-and-soil-the-hidden-helpers-of-our-food/18/) — Ladybirds eat aphids, tiny insects that suck plant juice, so farmers use them and other helpers instead of sprays; this is natural pest control. - [19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/291-bees-worms-and-soil-the-hidden-helpers-of-our-food/19/) — A barn owl family can eat thousands of mice and voles in a year, so farmers put up owl boxes. - [20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/291-bees-worms-and-soil-the-hidden-helpers-of-our-food/20/) — In the 1930s the ploughed prairies of America dried out and the soil blew away in huge dust storms called the Dust Bowl; many families lost their farms, and farmers learned to plant trees and keep soil covered. - ← previous: [Insects as food in other countries](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/290-insects-as-food-in-other-countries/) - next →: [Dogs from wolves to best friends: living with dogs today](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/292-dogs-from-wolves-to-best-friends-living-with-dogs-today/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)