Royal Jelly

Sweet Drop Apiary Royal Jelly

Royal jelly is secreted by the hypopharyngeal gland (sometimes called the brood food gland) of young worker (nurse) bees, to feed young larvae and the adult queen bee.
Royal jelly is always fed directly to the queen or the larvae as it is secreted; it is not stored.
This is why it has not been a traditional beekeeping product.
The only situation in which harvesting becomes feasible is during queen rearing, when the larvae destined to become queen bees are supplied with an over-abundance of royal jelly.
The queen larvae cannot consume the food as fast as it is provided and royal jelly accumulates in the queen cells.
The exact definition of commercially available royal jelly is therefore related to the method of production: it is the food intended for queen bee larvae that are four to five days old.
The differentiation between queen and worker bees is related to feeding during the larval stages.
Indeed, all female eggs can produce a queen bee, but this occurs only when, during the whole development of the larvae and particularly the first four days, they are cared for and fed “like a queen”.
Queen rearing, regulated by complex mechanisms within the hive, induces in a young larva a series of hormonal and biochemical actions and reactions that make it develop into a queen bee.
A queen bee differs from a worker bee in various ways:
in its morphology: the queen develops reproductive organs while the worker bee develops organs related to its work such as pollen baskets, stronger mandibles, brood food glands and wax glands.
in its development period: on average the queen develops in 15.5 days while worker bees require 21 days.
in its life span: the queen lives for several years as compared to a few months for the worker bee,
and its behavior: the queen lays up to several thousand eggs a day while workers lay eggs only occasionally.
Unlike workers, the queen never participates in any common hive activities.
It is mainly the spectacular fertility and long life-span of the queen, exclusively fed on royal jelly, which have suggestively led people to believe that royal jelly produces similar effects in humans.
In the early 1950’s, articles began to appear, particularly in the French beekeeping press, in praise of the virtues of royal jelly, referring to research conducted in several hospitals.
Chauvin (1968) however, was unable to find the source of such information and therefore considered it unfounded.
The myth of royal jelly started with an amazing biological phenomenon on the one hand and commercial speculation on the other, which, on the basis of initial results obtained by entomologists and physiologists, exploited the suggestibility and imagination of consumers willing to be seduced by the fascination of this rare and unknown product was exploited.
In fact, royal jelly was so rare and so little known that it was impossible to verify its actual presence in many products claiming its content.
In the years immediately following its first marketing, royal jelly quickly became widely known and consumed and the increasing demand motivated experts to refine production techniques and led more and more beekeepers to specialize in this activity.
At the same time, research on quality control of the commercial product and identification of its biological and clinical properties found growing support.
Consumption of royal jelly has been growing ever since, even without its benefit to human health having ever been scientifically confirmed.
The Western medical establishment has always been wary of the effects claimed for this product and in most cases refuses to consider it, largely because of the way royal jelly was initially promoted.
In spite of a vast number of publications praising its virtues and the apparently abundant bibliography, there is still a serious lack of scientific data on the clinical effects of royal jelly.