The Arrival of the Bee Box Quizzes

The Arrival of the Bee Box Quiz

1 Who is the poem's speaker?

A bee who lives on a farm

A writer comparing her words to swarming bees

Somebody who has just ordered a box full of bees

A grieving husband participating in the custom of "telling the bees"
2 Broadly speaking, what did bees symbolize in seventeenth-century Europe?

Noisiness and immorality

Creativity and individuality

Hard work and piety

Poverty and monasticism
3 What is the meaning of the word "colonnade"?

A dessert made of fruit

A military parade

A row of columns

A colonial outpost
4 Which writer did NOT use bees as a symbol or allegory?

Fanny Burney

Mary Leapor

John Mandeville

John Greenleaf Whittier
5 What are the bees probably NOT intended to symbolize in this poem?

The speaker's thoughts

Sexual aggression

Familial demands on women

Climate change
6 Where does the poem most likely take place?

The speaker's home

A school

A field of flowers

An industrial honey farm
7 Which collection was this poem a part of?

The Colossus

Ariel

The Bell Jar

Double Exposure
8 How does the work's final stanza most clearly differ from the others?

It is written in a different meter

It is the only part that does not rhyme

It is only one line long

It is spoken by a different speaker
9 Fill in the blank: I wonder if they would forget me/If I just undid the locks and stood back and _______"

ran away

closed my eyes

died

turned into a tree
10 Which is an example of irony?

The speaker's comparison of herself to God

The speaker's feeling of temptation despite the danger of the bees

The amount of noise that the bees make

The speaker's ability to keep her bees alive or let them die
11 Fill in the blank: It is the noise that _____ me most of all,

ensnares

appalls

intrigues

distracts
12 What does the speaker NOT compare the box to?

A tent

A coffin

A baby

A chair
13 How many stanzas are in the poem?

3

7

5

9
14 The speaker compares the bees to a mob from where?

Victorian Britain

The Old West

Ancient Rome

Revolutionary America
15 What is the meaning of the word "laburnum"?

A kitchen counter

A type of tree

A New England company

A diploma
16 What is the meaning of the word "din"?

Dinner

Hillside

Sunset

Noise
17 Which best describes the poem's portrayal of power?

The speaker loses her power when she buys the bees and gives up her job

The speaker struggles for power, but is no match for nature

The bees' power comes from their cleanliness and cooperativeness

The speaker struggles to decide whether it is she or the bees who holds disproportionate power
18 What is the poem's meter?

It has no set meter

Dactylic pentameter

Anapestic tetrameter

Iambic pentameter
19 What best describes the poem's conflict?

The beekeeper's conflict with the industrialist

The speaker's fight against the queen bee

The bee's decision about whether to sting the human

The speaker's decision about whether to free the bees
20 What best describes the speaker's feelings about the bees?

maddening irritation

intimacy and love

alternating fascination and fear

self-effacing admiration
21 What type of stanzas appear in the poem?

Couplets

The stanzas are unmatched

Sestets

Tercets
22 How is the theme of femininity discussed in the poem?

The queen bee represents the feminists of the twentieth century

The bees' collaboration suggests that only collaboration between women will better their lot

The poem subtly equates the speaker's fear of the bees with women's fear of violence or subjugation

The speaker's desire to engage with insects hints at a need to escape human gender norms
23 Which mythological figure is alluded to in the poem?

Persephone

Narcissus

Hercules

Daphne
24 What do the trees most closely symbolize?

The abundance of nature

Escape from conflict

Strength

The speaker's ambivalence
25 Which of the following is a metaphor?

"Square as a chair and almost too heavy to lift"

"There is only a little grid, no exit"

"In my moon suit and funeral veil"

"They can die, I can feed them nothing"

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