A NEW METHOD OF ROYAL JELLY HARVESTING WITHOUT GRAFTING LARVAE

Royal jelly (RJ) is an important bee product and one of the major income sources for beekeepers. For a long time, harvesting royal jelly has largely relied on manually grafting larvae by using grafting needles to remove young (similar to 1 day old) larvae from a colony to a cell cup. Then, frames of cell cups with the removed brood are placed in productive colonies in a timely manner. Grafting larvae is the first and most difficult step in the process of harvesting RJ. Moreover, the process is time-consuming and labor-intensive. It needs not only effort, but is also restricted by the availability of larvae and the eyesight of the technician. Low efficiency strongly limits the development of royal jelly production. To improve the hardest step in harvesting RJ, we have invented a new method of harvesting royal jelly without grafting larvae. Our results show that the method is feasible and improves the production of royal jelly.