# adding royal jelly to cell builder or breeder queen



## irwin harlton (Jan 7, 2005)

Would adding royal jelly to syrup increase or help production in a cell builder or breeder hive?


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## BWrangler (Aug 14, 2002)

Hi Irwin,

No. The best possible conditions for queen rearing will exist when the beekeeper cooperates with the bees biology and behavior. After all, it's actually the bees whose raise the queens and not the beekeeper :>)

Just make sure the bees are healthy, well-fed and in the right mood and they will do the best job possible. Adjustments made to compensate for less than desirable conditions are never entirely successful. And the resulting queens might be better than without the adjustment, but they will never be as good as they could have been, had the proper conditions been established at the outset.

Raising queens is relatively easy. Raising a few great queens, at the right time of the year, is also really easy. But raising lots of great queens throughout a season is very difficult. To get great queens, it is very important to know when not to raise them. :>)

Regards
Dennis


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## Antero (Jan 9, 2005)

royal jelly is composed of water, proteins, 
fatty acids, organic acids, vitamins and minerals. It is produced from a 
combination of a liquid called bee milk and other regurgitated 
carbohydrates (sugars). "Bee milk" is the secretion of the hypopharyngeal 
and mandibular glands of worker bees less than 18 days old. The digestion 
of large amounts of pollen these young bees have eaten is essential to the 
production of certain organic acids and vitamin B in the bee milk. 
The interesting thing is that both workers and queens are fed bee milk as 
larvae but in different proportions. The royal 
jelly fed to queens is 
higher in pantothenic acid, biopterin and neopterin than the worker jelly. 
IMO .It wouldn'd hurt them,


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

The freshness of the royal jelly seems critical. The workers constantly remove the old and add new royal jelly to the queen cells.

Some people prime the cups with royal jelly when grafting. While this seems to cut down on them drying out too fast, I don't see a lot of difference in acceptance.

After they have accepted the queen cells, I think the essential thing is that the nurse bees have a steady supply of fresh pollen and nectar or syrup.

I don't know where you'd get enough royal jelly to make a significant difference by feeding it to the nurse bees. Besides, making it is their job. The important thing here is to have LOTS of nurse bees. So many they don't have enough work to keep them busy.


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## GaSteve (Apr 28, 2004)

>To get great queens, it is very important to know when not to raise them. :>)

Please elaborate. I assume one of those times is too early in the season when there isn't enough flying drones for proper mating. What are other times to avoid?


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Actually if you want to breed for cold weather bees, breeding them "too early" or "too late" will filter out all of the warm weather bees. Unfortunatly it may also result in poor mating.

Anytime the bees can't provide enough nurse bees, drones, and fresh pollen and food for feeding the queens is a bad time.


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## BWrangler (Aug 14, 2002)

Hi GaSteve,

Knowing when not to raise queens involves not only the time of the year, but also the condition of the hives and dynamics of the bee population. And that assessment is the real art of queen rearing.

A queen rearer looks at hives differently than a honey producer. A bad time to raise queens, like during a major honey flow, would actually appear to be the best for most beekeepers. The hive population is high, the weather is warm, the bees are very active, there's lots of food and brood, and the bees are drawing comb. Some beekeepers will pick a hive with a massive bee population to raise queens and not realize that if the dynamics are wrong, the large population will actually interfer with queen rearing. Etc.

Regards
Dennis


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

The most difficult time of all to raise high quality queens is during the middle of a strong nectarflow. The bees focus all their attention on gathering and storing nectar and almost totally ignore brood including the beekeepers would-be queens.

Fusion


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## irwin harlton (Jan 7, 2005)

The reason I asked,this beekeeper used a syrup feed containing royal jelly. See site http://www.beekeeping.com/_menus_us/index.htm?menu.htm&0
uder new pages, article

06/02/05 - Increasing From 100 To 1,000 Hives In Three Months Yeganehrad ( PDF file 191 Kb)


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## Dick Allen (Sep 4, 2004)

The article you cited contained this: The objective of the feeding was to stimulate the hypopharyngeal glands of bees to produce enough royal jelly for queen cells.

I suppose thats all well and good, but according to my bee books royal jelly is largely derived from the mandibular glands while worker jelly comes more from the hypopharyngeal glands. FWIW.


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## Antero (Jan 9, 2005)

The Biology of the Honey Bee-Mark Winston,Page67

Terry


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## jean-marc (Jan 13, 2005)

Irwin Harlton:

I've used Mr Yeganehrad's Caspian solution to raise queen cells. It helped. He calls the feed supplement. Honey and pollen are added to the syrup as well as what he calls "Caspian Solution". This is a mixture of worker and royal jelly as well as pheromones. He tried marketing this 2 years ago and had many obstacles. I think that project is on hold and he is focusing his energy on building a fairly large commercial operation.

Jean-Marc


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## irwin harlton (Jan 7, 2005)

thank you. Jean-Marc


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## Hook (Jun 2, 2002)

Adding royal jelly from where? I think I agree with MB here. I think freshness would make alot of difference in this situation. If your queens are being raised when they are supposed to, the will be enough royal jelly available anyway, and it will be produced within the hive, with all natural products from the area the bees forage. And I think that is probably the most important thing.


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## jean-marc (Jan 13, 2005)

Hook:

The royal jelly comes from the Caspian solution. I agree freshness is critical. Royal and worker jelly breakdown quickly when removed from the hives. Mr Yeganehrad adds preserving agents to the solution to prevent the breakdown of the royal jelly. What they are and how he mixes it to make his Caspian Solution,I have no idea. This is part of "trade secrets" which he does not wish to divuldge. I think this is where he has had his obstacles when trying to market his product. The thinking goes something like this: If you do not tell us what is in it, and how you made it then we( governement apiculturists) will not support any claims made by Mr Yeganehrad, nor do we wish to investigate such claims. Mr Yeganehrad counters those thoughts with: I will not divuldge knowledge and techniques that have been developed at my expense. Presumably they are fairly easy to duplicate.
What I do know for sure, is that I have obtained the largest queen cells when using Caspian Solution.
Short of that, plenty of pollen, nectar, nurse bees goes a long way in making good queen cells.

jean-marc


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## Antero (Jan 9, 2005)

<Caspian Solution has been used to treat AFB since 1986 in Iran, and was introduced in Canada in year 2000. Studies have been conducted in both countries with consistently successful results.>


Terry


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## Antero (Jan 9, 2005)

Google Search-Caspian Apiaries


Terry


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