Royal jelly is a secretion by the honey bee that is used for nutrition of the larvae. It is secreted from the hypopharyngeal glands in the heads of young workers and used to feed all of the larvae in the colony, including those destined to become workers.
If a queen is needed, a larva is chosen and will receive only royal jelly (in large quantities) as its food source for the first four days of its growth, and this rapid, early feeding triggers the development of queen morphology, including the fully developed ovaries needed to lay eggs.
Royal jelly is produced by stimulating colonies with movable frame hives to produce queen bees. Royal jelly is collected from each individual queen cell when the queen larvae are about four days old. It is collected from queen cells because these are the only cells in which large amounts are deposited; when royal jelly is fed to worker larvae, it is fed directly to them, and they consume it as it is produced, while the cells of queen larvae are "stocked" with royal jelly much faster than the larvae can consume it. Therefore, only in queen cells is the harvest of royal jelly practical.
A well-managed hive during a season of 5-6 months can produce approximately 500g of royal jelly. Since the product is perishable, producers must have immediate access to proper cold storage in which the royal jelly is stored until it is sold or conveyed to a collection centre. Sometimes honey or beeswax are added to the royal jelly, supposedly to aid in preservation.
Royal jelly is often sold for human consumption as a dietary supplement because of components like B-complex vitamins such as pantothenic acid (vitamin B5) and vitamin B6 (pyridoxine). It can also be found in various beauty products. The overall composition of royal jelly is 67% water, 12.5% crude protein and 11% simple sugars, also including a relatively high amount (5%) of fatty acids.
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