Royal jelly is a highly nutritious superfood used to feed both baby bees and their Queen. Royal jelly is made during the breeding of queen bees. There are two different approaches for royal jelly production: the first is directly harvesting it from the queen cups with a small spoon or using more modern techniques.
In general, the amount of royal jelly collected from each hive is about 0.3 - 0.7 oz (10-20 g), while advanced techniques yield approximately 2.0 - 3.5 lbs. (1000-1500 g).
The most common technique for producing royal jelly involves preparing queen bee cups with beeswax that are approximately 8-9 mm wide and 8-10 mm deep in a wooden frame. The larvae are then transferred into these cups in a hive with the highest number of young worker bees.
About 48-72 hours later, the molds containing the queen bee cups and royal jelly are removed from the hive, and their extended portions are trimmed with a knife.
Then, the larvae placed in the queen bee cups are taken with a small pair of pliers, and the produced royal jelly is harvested with a small wooden spoon.