Talk:Royal jelly

I am currently running an experiment with different feeding regimes and the impacts on worker bee survival. I have found that bees fed royal jelly experience a higher mortality than when fed an artificial protein source.In light of this, can anyone guide me to some literature on royal jelly and it's impacts on survival of bees?? thank you ChiraagChiraag boodhoo 16:47, 21 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

As a beekeeper (Bk) I am interested in the mechanics of harvesting royal jelly (RJ), as it's my opinion that RJ is surrounded by more myth than fact. Whenever I speak to other Bk.'s who promote RJ they suddenly don't want to speak about it or are so vague that one wonders where their information comes from. Can you point to any scientific data regarding both harvesting and human consumption?

The way in which it is fed to the larvae directly from the nurse bee in minute quantities and produced "on the fly", would mean that harvesting would effectively kill that brood or at least weaken the colony by slowing it's development and thus potentially destroying the hive come the winter, making the price far higher than those advertised - maybe they do not sell the real thing, who would know?

It may also be true that the component parts of RJ are beneficial but surely they can be more easily obtained from other sources?

Kind regards Adrian Wells

If there is all this other stuff, B-complex vitamins and whatnot, in royal jelly, how in the heck is the acetylcholine 'pure'? eritain 23:12, 2 December 2005 (UTC)Reply

The word pure in this context makes no sense. You can only say, in royal jelly there is also acetylcholine. --Fackel 01:03, 1 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I have added an alternative POV on the dietary claims, with link to some criticism on quackwatch.

I note that you say that Royal Jelly is secreted from the heads of young workers. I would agree with this and would point out that these young bees, or nurse bees, do not forage at this stage in their lives. So your device at the entrance to the hive (a spittoon? Sorry couldn't help that)will not work! Maybe you are talking about pollen? Could you please clarify?

Kind regards Adrian Wells

The Futurama reference referred to "Space honey" not "royal jelly" (which was present in the episode but insignificant). I am removing it. Escuerdo 22:16, 23 January 2006 (UTC)Reply

Baldercrap! The royal jelly was used to get fry back from the dead by having the royal jelly fall on the couch that had fry's fluids in. (baldercrap is a quote from the show, not meant as an offence)Jackpot Den 22:05, 1 May 2006 (UTC)Reply

Actually, in the episode Leela packs the Royal Jelly as a "snack" for the queen bee they are trying to take back. The jelly is then mentioned again later when Leela accidently knocks some of it on to the couch which brings Fry back. Additionaly, the wikipedia article[1] on the episode links to this article. I see no reason not to add this to the Science Fiction part in the references. Tuffsnake June 14, 2007

The space honey was all over the place, but the ROYAL JELLY equivalent was only in one place, and served the same purpose as actual royal jelly. It was a pretty obvious reference to RJ (only with a different name, can't remember it at the moment) esp. when you consider its queen-related purpose and what the characters say when they find it (again, after walking past tons of the normal honey). This is a valid pop culture, just as much so as how Scientology was the obvious target of mockery in the funny 2nd season episode of Millennium. :) 199.214.27.87 23:05, 4 January 2007 (UTC) (update: the Slurm Factory episode was prolly also a less direct reference, but the "Leela, wake up!" episode is irrefutable. :) )Reply

"Consult your Doctor before taking this, or any other substance you even remotely suspect may cause death." What a great quote! But seriously, isn't it a bit of a silly line? Loserdog³⁰⁰⁰ 19:58, 25 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I'm adding a {{External links|October 2006}} to the article as there seems to be an insane amount of sources cited compared to the length of the article. It's probably not the right template for this, and i think the article warrants a {{pagenumbers}} as well, but i suppose i'll let someone else who knows more about templates to take care of that :)

I heard once that former President Reagan was on a Royal Jelly diet - he would consume a mass of it weekly - if anyone can verify this statement, it can be part of the 'funny' notes next to science fiction on the main page.

--Gautam3 02:50, 6 November 2006 (UTC)Reply

What does royal jelly taste like? It doesn't mention that here, and I'm sure that more than a few readers are wondering this.

It has a vaguely acidic, strong flavour, behind which it reminds that of beeswax (possibly because it contains stearic acid). Most people consider royal jelly rather disgusting enough that they only accept ingesting it in some way that minimizes perception of the substance's flavour, generally by placing a small amount of RJ below their tongue and letting it be slowly dissolved by saliva. I personally don't think it tastes that bad, instead finding its flavour somewhat interesting to try, but mine's probably a rather rare exception. This is obviously all from personal experience: if you don't belive me, try it for yourself, but beware some people consider RJ's taste to be absolutely shocking. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.55.205.213 (talk) 22:38, 14 May 2009 (UTC)Reply

HI, i am currently running experiments on the effects of different feeding regimes on the health of worker bees.I have found that the bees are shown to experience higher mortality when fed diets containing RJ than when fed diets containing an artificial protein source. I am still looking for possible explanations for this. Can anyone guide me to some relevant literature? Thank you Chiraag boodhooChiraag boodhoo 16:47, 21 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

This article seems to have been written by an opponent of the commercial royal jelly industry. If so, its lack of neutrality needs to be corrected. Mal7798 (talk) 23:36, 3 February 2008 (UTC)Reply

You guys will stick anything in your mouth.70.190.168.175 (talk) 18:34, 3 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

First, the article was written by several editors, not one person. Second, do you see that list of sources? If the "commercial royal jelly industry" can produce some peer-reviewed scientific studies to back their claims, then by all means, let's include them in that list, and change the article accordingly. WP:NPOV explicitly states that neutrality is NOT a synonym for "equal time". WP is packed to the rafters with articles that are completely neutral and ALSO completely one-sided. If there are no reliable sources to back them up, then the claims for "miracle properties" of royal jelly will simply have to remain out of Wikipedia for the time being (see WP:UNDUE). When claims of the industry are directly contradicted by published scientific data (such as the presence of vitamins which are not present), then that also must be included - that's exactly what NPOV dictates. Dyanega (talk) 05:38, 4 February 2008 (UTC)Reply

No need to be a prick; I'm sure that Mal7798 understands the basic concepts of Wikipedia. Now, as I'm looking through the histories of your edits (see: Major overhauls) to this article, I've noticed that the more you seem to get your hands on this article, the more your bias against Royal Jelly's use in New Age healthcare is shown. I will be correcting most of that to keep this article as NPOV as possible, but I encourage any users who can cite reliable sources (including industry claims) to include more information in this article. As a note for everyone, this is an encyclopedia, not a science textbook. Claims made by any and/or all industries are allowed in any and/or all articles, so long as they are cited. If scientific data disagrees with the claims, that should definitely be included AS WELL (instead of removing the claims from the article entirely), so long as they also cite sources.65.93.75.80 (talk) 08:59, 4 June 2009 (UTC)Reply

In addition, I'd like to ask why it seems that there is an all-out war on Wikipedia against New Age healthcare recently? I'm not biased towards or against it, as it's my opinion that if you're ill, and medical doctors are already doing everything they can for you, so long as you run it by them first (to see if there would be any negative reactions/effects), I see no reason why people shouldn't try whatever else they can to get better. But, it really seems as if many here are completely against it (other articles I've read have given me this impression).65.93.75.80 (talk) 08:59, 4 June 2009 (UTC)Reply

There's no all out war against alternative medecine, but the fact that slternative therapies are coming in for a haircut is not that surprising. Part of the reason that they're alternative is that they struggle to provide good quality scientific arguments in favour of their efficacy. If the efficacy of a treatment is highly disputed, it is likely that many of the relatively unsubstantiated claims for them in WP articles will be removed. Thousands of people use homeopathy, but there's still no evidence that it's any better than a placebo. Any claims to the contrary will need some very strong citations. That's not to say that alternative therapies have no merit, or that they should not be in Wikipedia. It does mean that they (like everything else here) can't make claims without good quality substantiation. JulesVerne (talk) 18:06, 9 November 2009 (GMT)

WP is indeed an encyclopedia not a scientific journal. It is a presentation of viewpoints (well documented). Citation is key. An industry website for the industry opinion or industry claim. One cannot reasonably use this as evidence to justify a scientific claim. WP is not a place for original research. I.e. one should not be trying to justify oneself aside from citation. One should be describing/explaining the claims made by others (and possibly summarizing their reasoning). A journal would be the appropriate location for original scholarship or an essay published elsewhere. If a journal doesn't exist, start one.

Honestly, good scholarship on these topics would be well welcomed and I know many academics who wish more people knew how to think and write critically on topics for publication. We get dull after a while.. Instead of trying to fight anti-scientific reasoning (if in fact it is unscientific), how about we try fighting unrigorous thinking and posts without citations?

If the bee industry makes claims that are claimed to be refuted by scientists, then discuss it. Discuss problems in scholarship cited by others. If the scientists doing the research are funded by big pharma, this also should be mentioned as their authority is put into question (along with the validity of their results) by an apparent conflict of interest. This is a far larger problem today than is widely discussed. Financial gain can corrupt research results by pressuring scientists. Many studies demonstrate this. Just look at what happened at Bell Labs over superconducting materials—a good editor knows their sources. Do these editors?

I'd like to see better scholarship all around. We can do better. Remember, scientists generally describe, not prescribe. Leave that to politicians. Like a linguistic catalog, lexicographic [dictionary], describe the facts, do not prescribe them. Leave it up to your well informed readers, informed by your vigorous efforts. And above all, if you must do original research to figure these things out, write an article for publication. Who knows, it might get published—and if it does, you could mention it on the Talk page, and if other editors think it worthy for inclusion, you just avoided the no original research clause. By jove! Dragoon91786 (talk) 18:16, 11 December 2013 (UTC)Reply

Editor Request: As I'm currently on mobile and the site doesn't seem to want to let me introduce proper paragraph breaks (they either weren't registering or registered huge!), could someone on desktop or who knows the proper mobile formatting code fix the above formatting correction so that it shows up correctly with a single blank space between the individual paragraphs?

Mine either would have no line break or created these huge spacing gaps. The changes are effectively superfucial to improve readability and correct typing errors.

I wanted it to have a single space gap between paragraphs without eliminating the paragraph indentations necessary for proper legibility. Dragoon91786 (talk) 01:22, 9 December 2022 (UTC)Reply

According to the German article that cites a newspaper article as a source, royal jelly doesn't trigger anything, it's the absence of regular nutrition, honey and pollen (which deactivate certain queen-genes through DNA_methylation), that makes a queen become a queen. I can't find the published article since it seems to have been only in print, but Australian scientists are supposed to have found that out. Any experts here who can comment? 91.16.57.119 (talk) 02:14, 1 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

I think this might be what you're thinking of: https://www.wired.com/2015/09/royal-jelly-isnt-makes-queen-bee-queen-bee/ and the paper is http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/7/e1500795 . If I get a chance I'll try and write this up in the article! Abergabe (talk) 14:29, 8 February 2017 (UTC)Reply

Is this really a picture of royal jelly, illustrating the article, or of bee pollen (compare pictures here)? --McGeddon (talk) 12:00, 5 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

"also including a relatively high amount (5%) of fatty acids." - relative to what? 67.246.176.132 (talk) 20:30, 25 March 2010 (UTC)Reply

revised

A search of "royal jelly" on www.pubmed.gov now yields 371 research articles. Perhaps we should say just that in this article. I was looking to verify hearsay on estrogenic effects and Down's syndrome and found: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18830443 . However, in scrolling through all these titles, it's like "take your pick" for whatever malady you have and see if you can find an authoritative article. As a friend and an editor, I would send people on this pubmed search with the warning that finding just one published study does not mean much.

Suggested addition to the article: "A search of the PubMed database yields hundreds of research papers on the analysis and possible uses of Royal Jelly."

Comments? Bridgettttttte_babble^poop 22:57, 25 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

Looks like a better application of WP:MEDRS would be in order: emphasize any reviews, de-emphasize individual studies. --Ronz (talk) 03:40, 18 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

With Ronz on this. As of 11/2017, 696 citations yield from a PubMed search on royal jelly. Quantity is meaningless. To the point, are there clinical (human) trials, and have the results been summarized and evaluated in reviews, systematic reviews or meta-analyses? Those and only those are valid citations. David notMD (talk) 01:49, 5 November 2017 (UTC)Reply

"Sometimes honey or beeswax are added to the royal jelly, which is thought to aid its preservation."

This kind of sentence is ridiculous. It sounds like the typical myth of a remote mountain community where local wisdom prevails over scientific truth. If this is not verifiable, I would remove it.

ICE77 (talk) 04:46, 10 October 2013 (UTC)Reply

If you allow a remark: I don't know which is the case but, if there exists some product that has "beeswax or honey added" for supposed preservative effect, then the above statement describes that practice correctly. Though it might be pointed out that the preservative effect is not proven and, therefore the addition in fact does not prolong the shelf life but instead results in pumping up the quantity of a product while lowering it's actual content of royal jelly. Which does not necessarily mean that the jelly buffed or diluted with addition of other (cheaper) ingredients is less effective since the effectiveness of royal jelly seems to be unproven in the first place, but nevertheless it can be regarded as a way of selling a mixture of cheaper substances under the name of a well sought after substance. (Which is a common practice in all kind of business.) (80.98.114.70 (talk) 12:23, 7 February 2016 (UTC)).Reply

In my opinion, the information on health effects is quite unsatisfactory and sounds biased. The article cites papers that raise doubts around the health benefits of the royal jelly, but does not at all mention scientific evidence supporting the benefits, for example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3499288/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5549483/ https://www.usab-tm.ro/utilizatori/ZOOTEHNIE/file/REVISTA%202011/vol%2044/2/BIOCHIM/Pavel.pdf

Am I missing something or such scientific reports are simply ignored?

Koroner (talk) 10:18, 10 February 2018 (UTC)Reply

Missing WP:MEDRS maybe? --Ronz (talk) 15:33, 10 February 2018 (UTC)Reply

Worker bees and queens do not have an "identical clonal nature". Worker bees, like queens, grow from fertilised eggs; each worker is unique, a child of the queen and one of the dozen or more drones that she mated with. This is well described on the Queen bee wikipedia page.

Even drones are not clones. The queen is diploid (two different versions of each gene, one from each parent), the drone is haploid, with only one of each gene. Which copy of each gene a drone receives is essentially random. Drones laid by the same queen will not be identical, neither clones of the Queen nor of each other.

I'll be changing that text as soon as I can think of an appropriate wording. Itsbruce (talk) 07:57, 2 July 2018 (UTC)Reply

How much of different vitamins does royal jelly really have (in general)? Fao.org source used in the current article (archived here) claims that 1 g of fresh royal jelly has 159-265 mg of pantothenic acid (15900-26500 mg/100 g), for example, and cites a source from 1988. This amount is insane. Other sources like this one claim that it has about 52.8 mg of pantothenic acid per 100 g of jelly, but both sources used this publication use values that ultimately trace back to this publication from 1989. Also, the current version of this article claim that "Royal jelly is 67% water...". What percentages are these? Mass, volume, molarity or something else? 5-HT2AR (talk) 15:28, 26 November 2019 (UTC)Reply

  This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 8 January 2024 and 19 April 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Peer reviewers: Mpankey.

— Assignment last updated by Mirandafast (talk) 03:22, 19 February 2024 (UTC)Reply