My father, brother and uncle are beekeepers with a very large commercial apiary here in Canada. They manage twelve hundred colonies spread out in "bee yards" that number twenty hives each. I've been helping these beekeepers tend their hives all my life, and I have NEVER seen even one drop of royal jelly. But that's not to say it doesn't exist…
For many years I was intensely critical of energy drinks, memory drinks, or sexual vitality drinks that claim to contain royal jelly. You've seen these so called health products--the worst offenders are those tiny vials of red liquid decorated with Chinese characters and sealed with a gold cap. No way, I thought--how could anybody ever persuade honey bees to give up what they've been programmed instinctively to feed to their young? It's all baloney I reckoned. Then I discovered the truth--I was wrong. And that's always a hard lesson.
Royal jelly is a milky white substance that's secreted from the hypo pharyngeal glands in the heads of young workers and is used (amongst other substances) to feed all of the young in the colony. Nature has designed this fluid to aid in the development of immature or young bees. Now here's the magic: if a queen bee is desired, a hatch ling is fed ONLY royal jelly, in large quantities, for four days. This rapid early feeding triggers the development of the queen's morphology, which includes fully developed ovaries. Remember, the queen bee lays ALL the eggs in the hive. So if the hive loses its queen, and the worker bees have no fresh eggs to morph into another queen, that colony will die.
It was just last summer that I discovered, much to my surprise, that royal jelly is produced commercially by stimulating colonies with movable frame hives--in other words they trick the worker bees into thinking they must hatch a queen or die. The crafty beekeeper then collects the jelly from each individual queen cell when the larva is about four days old. Apparently, a well-managed hive can produce approximately 500g of royal jelly in four months' time. This product is combined with honey for preservation, as it spoils easily.
People collect and sell royal jelly as a dietary supplement, claiming various health benefits because of components like B-complex vitamins such as vitamin B5 and vitamin B6; it's also used in various beauty products. The overall composition of royal jelly is about two-thirds water, one-eighth crude protein (including small amounts of many different amino acids), and one-eighth simple sugars. Royal jelly also has a relatively high amount (5%) of fatty acids. Although it DOES contain trace minerals, some enzymes, and small amounts of vitamin C, it does NOT have any anti-aging, memory restorative, or energy boosting properties.
And I still don't believe that those tiny vials of ginseng and royal jelly imported from mainland China and sold in corner stores all over America contain anything except sugar, water and a dash of red coloring.
