A male worker honey bee’s secretion known as royal jelly is used to feed larvae and adult queen bees. It is produced by honey bee workers’ “hypopharynx” glands and fed to female larvae inside the hive.
Australian Bee Products select a few female bee larvae and feed them exclusively with royal jelly secretions in specially designed queen bee cells when they are trying to produce a new queen bee, usually because the existing queen is weakening or has tragically passed away. This type of extreme nutrient-rich diet is known as “queen morphology,” and it transforms the larvae into a queen bee.
This results in a giant, healthier bee with fully developed and functional ovaries that can lay many larvae to fill the hive.
The Method of Cultivation
Regardless of their intended function in the bee hive, all honey bee larvae are initially fed the jelly, which is fluid from glands within the workers’ heads. They could be female “staff,” sterile male “drones,” or queen bees. The drone and staff larvae are no longer fed jelly after two or three days, but the queen bee larvae are fed this unique, nutrient-rich substance continuously throughout their early growth.
Humans disturb bee hive colonies with movable frames to obtain royal jelly for queen bee supplies. Once the queen bee larvae are 3 or 4 days old, the jelly is extracted from every single cell of the queen bee. Because only queen bee cells in the bee hive contain a significant amount of royal jelly, only those cells are used to gather the jelly. When the jelly is supplied to worker honey bee larvae, they immediately consume it; however, royal jelly is “stock stacked” inside the cells of the queen larvae, preventing the larvae from completely consuming it.
What’s in Royal Jelly, exactly?
Nearly all natural health stores gather the jelly and sell it to customers as a wholesome dietary supplement. Many different health benefits, particularly from vitamins B5 and B6, are claimed. About 65% of royal jelly is made up of water, with the remaining 12% being supermolecules and traces of other amino acids and carbohydrates (monosaccharides). Additionally, there are 5% more fatty acids than usual. It also contains a little amount of ascorbic acid, a few trace minerals, antibiotic components, enzymes, and medicine, but none of the fat-soluble vitamins:
- Royalactin
- Vitamin A
- Vitamin D
- Vitamin E
- Vitamin K
One “super-molecule” that has been given the name “royalactin” appears to be the secretory component that transforms a normal bee into a queen bee. When female honey bee larvae were given royal jelly that had been kept for a long time and then introduced to the bee hive, they developed into queen bees. The fruit fly also undergoes similar changes in makeup due to royalactin, increasing in size and developing ovaries.
Conclusion:- The morphological heterogeneity of honey bee queens and workers is well illustrated. Despite sharing the exact same DNA, they differ greatly in a wide range of traits, including morphological and physiological variances, queen bee lifetime, and reproductive capacity. Honey bees (workers) cannot reproduce and have inactive ovaries, whereas queens have enormous ovaries. The royal jelly diet of females, specifically the supermolecule royalactin, affects the queen/worker organic process. Large amounts of jelly are fed to female larvae that will develop into queen honey bees. This sets off a series of molecular actions that cause the queen bee’s development.