Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
character turns his baby son into a bee (or at least a black-and-yellow striped, hairy
baby who buzzed) by feeding him exclusively on royal jelly. Amazing stuff ! The
medicinal and curative properties of the substance lack much clinical research, but
what we do know is that it contains the eight essential amino acids, the full vitamin B
complex, acetylcholine (a powerful neurostimulant), testosterone, insulin-like peptides
and an antibiotic component. And it can easily be produced by any beekeeper whether
with one hive or a thousand.
Forming queen bees
What function does royal jelly have in the colony? Why is it produced? The basic
answer to these questions is that royal jelly is all about queen production, an issue so
vital to the propagation of the bee species that, in fact, all bees other than the drones
(who don't have a father) are destined to become queens. At first!
One of the questions often asked by new beekeepers is: how is a queen formed? The
nature of honey-bees turns this question on its head, and beekeepers should ask 'how
is a worker bee formed?' because it is worth repeating that all female larvae are destined
to be queens. Nurse bees interfere with the vast majority of these potential queens by
limiting their royal jelly diet, thereby turning them into sterile female workers instead.
It is simply this lack of royal jelly at a certain stage in their development that creates
workers. Queens stay as queens because the continued feeding of royal jelly stimulates
the correct hormone production to develop egg-producing organs.
Recent research in Brazil has looked at when and how these organs develop for queens
but don't for workers. This research found that all female larvae start off with the same
reproductive equipment (and are otherwise genetically the same as well). The pertinent
parts are the egg-producing ovarioles - long, skinny subdivisions of the ovaries. To
begin with, larval workers and queens have the same number of ovarioles. For the first
2½ to 3 days, this situation persists. While worker and queen larvae mature in different
cells, this makes little difference to their development - the important thing is that both
receive 100% royal jelly. So they stay the same and are on their way to queenhood.
On about day 3, the nurses stop giving larval workers 100% royal jelly food and give
them instead a mixture of jelly, pollen and honey. The workers thus receive much less
