Royal jelly

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Young queen larvae in queen bee fodder

Royal jelly , royal jelly or bee royal jelly is the jelly to which the honeybees their queens raise.

With this mixture of the secretions of the fodder gland and the maxillary gland of the workers, the bee larvae are fed during the first three larval stages and thus receive an enormous growth and development boost . The larva of the worker bee then only receives pollen and honey ; the queen's, however, is fed this royal jelly juice until her cell is covered. Furthermore, royal jelly fulfills an important function as part of a biological two-component adhesive with which the queen larvae are fixed in special honeycombs.

ingredients

Royal jelly contains u. a. Carbohydrates , protein , B vitamins and trace elements . The main ingredients are:

Extraction

Royal jelly is obtained in specialized beekeeping . The majority of beekeepers in German-speaking countries keep beekeeping as a leisure activity and do not harvest royal jelly, and the technical equipment for it is usually missing. Most of the royal jelly sold in Germany comes from China and is traded at prices between 100 and 130 euros per kilogram.

To obtain it, the queen is removed from a colony and prefabricated queen cells are inserted into the beehive . In order to isolate the lining, the queen larvae have to be removed after three days. In a bee season, a bee colony can be made to produce approx. 500 g royal jelly. The removal of the queen means an extremely stressful situation for the bee colony and a massive interference with the colony's equilibrium, which is why beekeepers who work close to nature generally reject the production of royal jelly.

There is an international ISO standard for royal jelly (ISO12824: 2016). This differentiates between two quality levels. These depend on the feeding of the colony. At the higher quality level, the bees only receive natural food. For the second stage, the bees are also fed with a feed solution.

Royal jelly is used in addition to propolis in dietary supplements and in cosmetic preparations; As a raw material for medicinal products, it is no longer of any importance, at least in German-speaking countries.

Health hazards

The consumption of royal jelly can lead to allergic reactions , especially due to its protein and amino acid content . After taking preparations containing royal jelly, allergic reactions on the skin, facial swelling, asthma attacks or worsening of existing asthma, vomiting, diarrhea or a drop in blood pressure and, in individual cases, life-threatening anaphylactic shock have been observed.

Importance of queen bee feed for larval development

It has long been assumed that royal jelly is the reason why a bee larva does not become a worker, but a queen.

This is what a Japanese study from 2011 suggests: The researchers succeeded in isolating a special protein from royal jelly ( royalactin ) and thus also producing queen-like specimens in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster . The weight and size of the body changed significantly; the animal's fertility also increased. A more recent study from 2016 could not confirm the effect of Royalactin ; thus queens developed from bee larvae even without Royalactin , and the further addition of Royalactin to the larval feed did not increase the number of queens. The effects of royal jelly on the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster could not be confirmed in more recent studies.

Australian researchers found negative feedback in 2008. The worker bees' diet, which consists of pollen and honey, prevents them from growing into queens. The diet switches off the transcription of certain genes through temporary modifications in the genome, known as DNA methylation .

The realization that the difference between queen and worker lies in the special feed is also one reason for the great popularity of royal jelly. Sometimes it is praised as a miracle cure with reference to the growth to the queen bee.

Others

Royal jelly is also the title of a short story by Roald Dahl from 1966.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Verena Leusch: Securely glued with royal jelly. Spektrum.de, March 16, 2018.
  2. ^ Anja Buttstedt et al .: How Honeybees Defy Gravity with Royal Jelly to Raise Queens. Current Biology , March 15, 2018, doi: 10.1016 / j.cub.2018.02.022 .
  3. ^ Extraction of royal jelly »All about honey . In: All about honey . ( rund-um-honig.de [accessed on November 19, 2018]).
  4. ↑ Medicines Commission of the German Medical Association: Medicines that contain queen bee feed (royal jelly) (PDF; 42 kB) .
  5. ↑ Assessment of propolis and royal jelly . In: Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) (Ed.): Updated opinion . No. 002/2009 , November 20, 2008 ( PDF; 39 kB [accessed November 9, 2012]).
  6. ↑ Masaki Kamakura: Royalactin induces queen differentiation in honeybees. Nature , April 24, 2011, doi: 10.1038 / nature10093 (English)
  7. ^ Anja Buttstedt, Christian H. Ihling, Markus Pietzsch, Robin FA Moritz: Royalactin is not a royal making of a queen . In: Nature . tape 537 , no. 7621 , September 22, 2016, p. E10-E12 , doi : 10.1038 / nature19349 ( nature.com ).
  8. ^ John R. Shorter, Matthew Geisz, Ergi Özsoy, Michael M. Magwire, Mary Anna Carbone: The Effects of Royal Jelly on Fitness Traits and Gene Expression in Drosophila melanogaster . In: PLOS ONE . tape 10 , no. 7 , July 30, 2015, ISSN  1932-6203 , p. e0134612 , doi : 10.1371 / journal.pone.0134612 ( plos.org [accessed October 11, 2016]).
  9. ↑ Stefanie L. Morgan, Joseph A. Seggio, Nara F. Nascimento, Dana D. Huh, Jasmin A. Hicks: The Phenotypic Effects of Royal Jelly on Wild-Type D. melanogaster Are Strain-Specific . In: PLOS ONE . tape 11 , no. 8 , August 3, 2016, ISSN  1932-6203 , p. e0159456 , doi : 10.1371 / journal.pone.0159456 ( plos.org [accessed October 11, 2016]).
  10. ↑ Breaking the Evil Spell in Der Spiegel 32/2008 of August 4, 2008.

Web links

Commons : Royal Jelly  - Collection of images, videos and audio files