THE WONDER JELLY FOR QUEEN BEES – ROYAL JELLY – AN UNSOLVED MYSTERY
Not everyone knows that a worker bee’s busy life is over after twenty-eight working days. Or did you know that the egg cells that normally produce worker bees can, when fed with a special substance develop into queens? There is something mysterious about this wonder of nature. For one thing, the queens are considerably bigger than the other bees, and, what is more, they live sixty times longer. A very special nutritive fluid is collected by the workers for those cells which ultimately produce queens. Although this phenomenon has been the subject of extensive scientific investigation, the understanding of its exact nature still eludes the researchers and only some of the jelly’s constituents have been isolated. The ancients perhaps knew more about it than we do, as we frequently find references to ‘ambrosia’, ‘nectar’ and other wonder foods in their writings and it is not unreasonable to assume that they were referring to what is now called ‘royal jelly’.
Unfortunately, no reference as to how this ambrosia was obtained is to be found, so our assumption must remain speculative. There is no doubt, however, that royal jelly possesses biological qualities of the highest order, for it enables the queen to lay as many as 2,000 eggs daily, and this with a single fertilisation. This is, indeed, a marvellous biological achievement, which stands unrivalled in nature.
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April 9, 2009 - 5:32 AM