Royal Jelly: properties, benefits and uses

Royal jelly is to be consumed in order to reduce fatigue and stimulate your immune defenses. It will be useful in order to prevent infections, tone your body and balance your nervous system. It is classically used in cure of 4 to 6 weeks, either pure or mixed with honey, or freeze-dried in capsules, caps or tablets, or in ampoules. The ideal intake corresponds to a dose of 0.5 to 0.6 g per day to be taken on an empty stomach, 15 minutes before breakfast, and up to 1 g per intake in case of overwork or convalescence. For children, doses should be divided by two or more, depending on age and weight.

The royal jelly cure is ideal at the change of seasons, at all stages of life, and it can be used more particularly for :

• Physical, psychological, sexual fatigue, convalescence, overworked state...
• Anxiety, stress, "unhappiness."
• Disorders of the memory.
• Loss of appetite with weight loss.
• State of fragility related to insufficient intake of essential elements (poor quality diet, following illness...)

Precautions for use

Royal jelly is contraindicated for people allergic to honey, bee venom, or any other product of the hive. Caution is also advised for people with asthma, eczema or hormone-dependent pathology.

Pure royal jelly in a jar is to store in the refrigerator between +2 and +5°C.

What is royal jelly made of?

After harvesting, the royal jelly is stored in jars between 2 and 5°C, and kept away from light, before being packaged. It should then be kept in the refrigerator. Moreover, a hive provides on average only 150 to 300 g of royal jelly per year! It is therefore an extremely precious product, which explains its final cost, which may seem a bit high.

It is important to know that the composition of royal jelly varies slightly depending on the race of the bee and its natural diet (pollen and nectar), but on average, there are :

• 62 to 68.5% water.
• 7 to 18% of carbohydrates, with mostly glucose (2 to 9%) and fructose (2 to 9%)
• 11 to 18%protein, including many essential amino acids
• 2-8% fat
• 1.4% minimum of 10-hydroxy-2-decenoic acid (10-HDA)
• 1% of miscellaneous assets.

And it is in this last very minority part that all the power of royal jelly lies! Indeed, these last constituents are active at very low concentrations, and the quantities present in royal jelly are sufficient for an important action: royal jelly provides vitamin B5 (it is the natural product that is the richest in it), vitamins B1, B2, B3, B7, B8, B9 and B12, and also minerals and trace elements (calcium, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, iron, copper and silicon). Since all these elements are essential to our body's metabolism and immune defenses, it is clear here how "royal" this jelly is. In addition, the 10-HDA acid, whose minimum content is regulated, is particularly interesting, and studies attribute to it an immunostimulant effect. But its properties do not stop there! Indeed, it contains acetylcholine, a major neuromediator for the balance of the nervous system, as well as substances similar to steroid hormones, and may play a role against certain diseases. Finally, note that among the 15% of proteins, royal jelly contains all the essential amino acids (eight in number) that allow the synthesis of the others and are therefore essential to our proper development!

How is royal jelly made?

Royal jelly is secreted between the fifth and fourteenth day of their existence by the pharyngeal and cephalic mandibular glands of young nurse bees. Although it is naturally present in the hive, it is present in insufficient quantities and in a form unsuitable for exploitation. Moreover, the quantity present is that which is required for its use within the hive, as food for the young larvae and the queen, and it is therefore impossible to take it in this way by depriving the colony. Therefore, beekeepers have developed special techniques to produce royal jelly in a responsible way, without endangering the survival of the bees.

The beekeeper is very important here: first of all, he will have selected certain breeds of bees known to produce more royal jelly. In addition, the beekeeper artificially causes a rearing of queens: to do this, the technique may seem barbaric, but beekeepers think above all of the good health of their hives and they do this with respect for the bees. First, the beekeeper removes the queen from the hive. Thus, the colony of bees, orphaned, made up of many workers and nurses, finds itself deprived... But bees are very intelligent insects, whose survival instinct is engraved in the hive! These "social" insects do not really exist as individuals, because it is the whole colony that forms the individual. So, very soon after this tragic event, the bees react and the nursery workers raise new royal larvae in specialized cells. But, this time, the beekeeper is as cunning as a fox, and he will place decoys in the queen cells, replacing the larvae. He then inserts into the hive a frame carrying about fifty plastic cups in which young larvae are deposited, thus creating a queen rearing. This stratagem then deceives the nannies, who continue to fill these cells with royal jelly that the beekeeper is happy to retrieve 3 days later (having taken care to delicately remove the queen larva). This technique requires extreme delicacy on the part of the passionate producer, and is called grafting. Indeed, given the small size of the larvae (1/4 of a mm) and therefore the small size of the plastic cups used as lures, it is necessary to be very meticulous when harvesting, which is done by aspiration.

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