Shadowing Practice: This Fly Torpedoes a Bindweed Bee’s Nest | Deep Look - Learn English Speaking with Video
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49 sentences
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1
Life for bindweed turret bees is violent and unfair.
2
It's spring in California and these male bees are in an all-out brawl, desperate to mate with the female trapped at the bottom of this pile.
3
Sometimes the fight is so intense that the female they're going after gets crushed to death.
4
But if she survives, she and the winner steal away and mate.
5
Until another male wants in.
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Buzzkill.
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Now she starts an epic dig, prepping a place to lay her eggs underground.
8
She tirelessly scoops earth with her mandibles, dousing it with nectar she collected earlier to soften it.
9
The majority of the world's bee species, 70%, nest in the ground.
10
These ones chose a dirt parking lot.
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Some nice folks cordoned it off to protect the bees.
12
Females work side by side.
13
Each is queen of her own funky little castle.
14
They build turrets, but only some of them are vertical.
15
Many are tunnel-like with a sideways entrance.
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Others curve down.
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You'll see why that's important in a bit.
18
Once the bees are done digging, they head off on another mission.
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They gather pollen from one plant only, morning glories, also known as bindweeds.
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She rubs her shaggy legs all over that pollen.
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And down she goes with her haul.
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Pollen pants.
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Inside her nest, she packs the pollen into neat balls, each one in its own chamber, and lays an egg on top.
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When the egg hatches into a larva, it will live off the pollen.
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she toils.
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Freeloaders show up.
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They look like a bee, but their huge eyes give them away.
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They're called, wait for it, bee flies.
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The fly doesn't dig or gather pollen for her young.
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She just hovers over a bee's nest and...
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Yep, she's dropping her own eggs in there.
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She'll drop 200 eggs over her lifetime.
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This is where those tunnels and curved turrets are useful.
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They make it harder for the flies to drop their eggs in from the air.
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But when the fly does succeed, the fly's egg hatches into a larva that digs tiny hooks into the bee larva.
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As the bee eats the pollen and grows, the fly larva sucks it dry.
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Sometimes the flies are so successful they can nearly wipe out a population of bees.
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These bees don't give up.
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Two or three months of mating, foraging, and warding off parasites come to an end when they seal up their nests with dirt.
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Below ground, babies will grow.
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The following spring, if the bees are lucky, a new tiny city will burst to life,
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full of bees persevering, just as their mothers did before them.
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Let's talk about yellow jackets.
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It's true, these ladies have a special taste for flesh.
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But they don't eat it themselves.
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They bring it to their young.
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How?
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By crashing your cookout and carving your burgers and dogs into teeny tiny meatballs.
49
Enjoy.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 49 sentences and 484 words to shadow. The speech runs for 4:46. The speaker talks slowly, about 102 words per minute, so there is time to copy every sound. Only 73% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| bee noun | /ˈbiː/ | A flying insect, of the clade Anthophila within the hymenopteran superfamily Apoidea, known for its organised societies (though only a minority have them), for… |
| egg noun | /ɛɡ/ | An approximately spherical or ellipsoidal body produced by birds, insects, reptiles, and other animals, often housing an embryo within a membrane or shell… |
| nest noun | /nɛst/ | A structure built by a bird as a place to incubate eggs and rear young. |
| dirt noun | /dɝt/ | Soil or earth. |
| gather verb | /ˈɡæðɚ/ | To collect normally separate things. |
| tunnel noun | /ˈtʌn(ə)l/ | An underground or underwater passage. |
| dig verb | /dɪɡ/ | To move hard-packed earth out of the way, especially downward to make a hole with a shovel. Or to drill, or the like, through rocks, roads, or the like. More… |
| curve noun | /kɚv/ | A bend, such as in a road. |
| hatch verb | /hæt͡ʃ/ | To emerge from an egg. |
| pants noun | /pænts/ | An outer garment that covers the body from the waist downwards, covering each leg separately, usually as far as the ankles; trousers. |
| chamber noun | /ˈt͡ʃeɪ̯mbɚ/ | The private room of an individual, especially of someone wealthy or noble. |
| violent adjective | /ˈvaɪ.ə.lənt/ | Involving extreme force or motion. |
| castle noun | /ˈkɑːsəl/ | A large residential building or compound that is fortified and contains many defences; in previous ages often inhabited by a nobleman or king. Also, a house or… |
| suck verb | /sʌk/ | To use the mouth and lips to pull in (a liquid, especially milk from the breast). |
| steal verb | /stiːl/ | To take illegally, or without the owner's permission, something owned by someone else without intending to return it. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| give up verb | To surrender (someone or something); to inform on (someone). |
| live off verb | To depend on financially. |
| show up verb | To appear, arrive, or attend, especially suddenly or erratically. |
| wipe out verb | To destroy (especially, a large number or complete set of people or things); to obliterate. |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 7 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, they're, doesn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: flesh /flɛʃ/, crush /kɹʌʃ/, shaggy /ˈʃæɡi/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like bee, egg, nest.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.