What is in news : Indian Royal Jelly has been found to surpass top-quality sellers, including those produced in Thailand and Taiwan.

What is Royal Jelly:

• Pearly white or pale yellow-coloured cohesive mixture of honey and secretions from the hypopharyngeal and mandibular glands of worker honeybees
• Contains moisture or water (60-70 per cent), lipids (1-10 per cent), minerals (0.8-3 per cent), proteins (9-18 per cent), sugar (7 per cent) and other elements.
• Highly nutritious
• Used as food to young larvae and adult queen honeybees
• Commercially, produced artificially by stimulating bee colonies to produce queen bee, grown outside its natural habitat. The larvae in the queen cells are fed with nutritious royal jelly. The perfect time to harvest royal jelly is when the maximum amount gets accumulated upon the larva turning 5 days old.
• Extraction requires specially trained manpower with expertise in extraction and excellent larvae grafting skills.
• Needs to be stored in sub-zero temperatures immediately after production, during packaging and also at the consumer’s end. Recommended temperature for fresh royal jelly is below –20 degrees Celsius. Freezee drier, a special machine, is needed to remove moisture from the fresh produce. At present, there are three such machines in India, which are imported from Germany.
• In a season of five to six months, a well-maintained hive can produce an estimated 900gms of royal jelly.

Benefits of consuming royal jelly :

• No medicine but a nutritious substance
• An average healthy person needs to consume only about 500 mg (fresh) and 200mg (powder) in a day to get maximum health benefits
• Known for its antioxidant properties
• It cures damaged cells in the body and rejuvenates them(cancer patients are advised consumption)
• Consumption is suggested to women for improving their fertility
• Found effective for women suffering from premenstrual and post-menopausal problems.
• Believed to cut down body ageing and makes people look much younger than their actual age, and is thus popular among celebrities.
• Royal jelly with higher 10 HDA is most nutritious.