ScienceDaily (July 18, 2012) — Scientists have discovered a
way to make worker bees produce an enhanced version of royal jelly (RJ) -- the
super-nutritious substance that dictates whether larvae become workers or
queens, and that is also renowned as a health supplement for people.
Their study, which found that the super RJ that makes queen
bee larvae grow 2-3 times larger than normal, appears in ACS' Journal of
Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
Chia-Nan Chen and colleagues explain that royal jelly is a
thick liquid made up of proteins, sugars and fats that is secreted by glands in
the throats and jaws of worker bees and fed to larvae. Workers feed all bee
larvae RJ for the first three days of their lives, but only the queen gets it
throughout life, growing larger and living up to 15 times longer than other
bees. The scientists treated worker bees with drugs called histone deacetylase
inhibitors (HDACis) to see whether they could enhance the larvae's growth…
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