--- title: Insects: six legs, three parts; ants, bees and wasps — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Insects: six legs, three parts; ants, bees and wasps», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Every adult insect is built on the same plan: six legs and a body in three parts, a head with eyes and feelers, a tho --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/36-insects-six-legs-ants-bees-and-wasps/) [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/) / Insects: six legs, three parts; ants,… # Insects: six legs, three parts; ants, bees and wasps Lesson 36 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 16 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/36-insects-six-legs-ants-bees-and-wasps/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/36-insects-six-legs-ants-bees-and-wasps/0/) — Every adult insect is built on the same plan: six legs and a body in three parts, a head with eyes and feelers, a thorax where the legs and wings join, and an abdomen at the back. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/36-insects-six-legs-ants-bees-and-wasps/2/) — Insects wear their skeleton outside like armour, so to grow they split it and climb out, leaving an empty skin like the dragonfly nymph's by the pond, and they breathe through tiny holes along their sides. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/36-insects-six-legs-ants-bees-and-wasps/3/) — Ants, bees and wasps live in big families run by a queen: ants follow smell trails to a crumb on the patio, and a honeybee dances on the comb to tell her sisters where the flowers are. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/36-insects-six-legs-ants-bees-and-wasps/4/) — Only females sting, and a honeybee that stings a person usually dies, so the wasp at the picnic is a far better reason to stay calm than to swat. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/36-insects-six-legs-ants-bees-and-wasps/5/) — Every adult insect has six legs and a body in three parts: head, thorax and abdomen; the legs and wings are all fixed to the thorax. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/36-insects-six-legs-ants-bees-and-wasps/6/) — Insects have a hard outside skeleton called an exoskeleton, and to grow they moult, splitting it and climbing out in a new soft one. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/36-insects-six-legs-ants-bees-and-wasps/7/) — Insects have no lungs: air enters through little holes along the sides called spiracles and travels down branching tubes to every part, which only works well over short distances, one reason insects stay small. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/36-insects-six-legs-ants-bees-and-wasps/8/) — A scout ant leaves a smell trail from food to the nest; others follow and strengthen it while the food lasts, then the trail fades. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/36-insects-six-legs-ants-bees-and-wasps/9/) — Leafcutter ants do not eat the leaves they carry: they chew them to grow a fungus garden underground and eat the fungus. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/36-insects-six-legs-ants-bees-and-wasps/10/) — Many ants can lift 10 to 50 times their own weight, because small animals are strong for their size; an ant blown up to the size of a person could hardly hold up its own weight. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/36-insects-six-legs-ants-bees-and-wasps/11/) — A honeybee's waggle dance shows the direction of flowers compared with the sun and, by the length of the waggle, how far away they are. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/36-insects-six-legs-ants-bees-and-wasps/12/) — Bees make honey from nectar by passing it between workers and fanning it until most of the water is gone; one worker makes only about a twelfth of a teaspoon in her life, and honey left too watery can go mouldy. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/36-insects-six-legs-ants-bees-and-wasps/14/) — Wasps build nests of paper by chewing wood and mixing it with spit, in six-sided cells, which fit together with no gaps and use the least material. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/36-insects-six-legs-ants-bees-and-wasps/15/) — A ladybird's number of spots shows which kind it is, such as the 7-spot or the 2-spot, not how old it is. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/36-insects-six-legs-ants-bees-and-wasps/16/) — A honeybee colony has one queen laying up to about 1,500 eggs a day in summer, tens of thousands of female workers and some male drones. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/36-insects-six-legs-ants-bees-and-wasps/17/) — Bumblebees warm up by shivering their flight muscles, so they can fly on cold spring mornings when honeybees cannot. - ← previous: [Birds of every kind: penguins, ostriches, parrots, hummingbirds, songbirds, crows](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/35-birds-of-every-kind/) - next →: [Insects: butterflies, beetles, flies, mosquitoes, grasshoppers](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/37-butterflies-beetles-flies-mosquitoes-grasshoppers/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)