Royal jelly, together with honey, propolis, and bee pollen, are called the four treasures of bees.
Due to the special status of the “queen bee” (actually the queen bee), royal jelly has also become one of the most mysterious bee products and is often developed as a health food.
Most health foods need to go through extraction, refining, compounding and other processing techniques, and the puree or freeze-dried powder of royal jelly can be directly made into health products, which shows its “excellent effect”.
At present, there are thousands of royal jelly health foods in the world, mainly for the functions of immune regulation, anti-fatigue, and anti-aging.
How does royal jelly come from?
Royal jelly is the oral secretion of worker bees (infertile female bees), which is used to feed bee larvae and queen bees. It is also called “bee saliva” abroad.
Common larvae are fed royal jelly for three days and then gradually develop into worker and drone bees.
A few larvae are constantly fed royal jelly, which develops into specialized egg-laying queens.
Through human intervention (actually tricking the bees), the colony will continue to breed queens, so people can collect the excess royal jelly and sell it.
The yield of royal jelly itself is low, and it needs to be taken from one hole to one hole in the honeycomb, so the labor cost is high and the price is expensive.
Royal Jelly Side Effects
Because royal jelly can affect the sexual development of bees, there are rumors that royal jelly contains a lot of sex hormones, children will have precocious puberty if they eat it, and adults will have breast cancer if they eat it. Is this true?
Many animal experiments have found that royal jelly does have the effect of similar sex hormones, but the hormone content in royal jelly is extremely low and much lower than that of animal foods, and it will also be destroyed in the process of digestion and absorption, so it is unlikely to be a direct hormone. effect.
At present, scientists suspect that the proteins or lipids in royal jelly have estrogen-like effects, so most royal jelly products will mark unsuitable groups as “children”.
In addition, the protein in royal jelly can cause allergic reactions, such as skin rashes, asthma, etc., and may cause breathing difficulties in severe cases.
From the literature reports, royal jelly-induced allergy is not common, but allergies, pollen allergies and asthma patients need to be vigilant.
