Aryabhatta's Poetry
Algebra
Level
2
Out of a swarm of bees, one fifth settled on a Kadamba blossom, one third settled on a Silindhra flower, three times the difference between those numbers flew to the bloom of a Kutaja, and the remaining one bee hovered about in the air.
What is the total number of bees?
The answer is 15.
This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try
refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and,
finally, (c)
loading the
non-javascript version of this page
. We're sorry about the hassle.
1 solution
If the total number of bees is taken as x , the problem statement can be written as
x = 5 x + 3 x + 3 ( 3 x − 5 x ) + 1
which on simplification gives x = 1 5 1 4 x + 1 or x = 1 5 .
Three bees on Kadamba blossom, five bees on Silindhra flower, six bees on Kutaja blossom and one bee in the air.