Everyone always confuses royal jelly with honey and thinks they are both products of honey. In fact, this is their connection and their difference. Many people do not understand the difference between royal jelly and honey and mistakenly believe that royal jelly and honey are the same thing. But in fact, they have essential differences in production process, storage conditions, health uses, prices, and so on. Royal jelly is a health product with obvious health benefits. Many people who take royal jelly feel that they eat well, sleep well, have good spirits, and have fewer illnesses. So what are the differences between royal jelly and honey? Today, let me tell you about the differences between royal jelly and honey. Let's see if you have a better understanding of both.
Introduction to Honey
Honey is the honey that bees collect from the nectar of flowering plants and brew in the honeycomb. Bees collect nectar or secretions from plants with a water content of about 75%, store it in their second stomach, undergo various transformations in their bodies, and after about 15 days of fermentation, they reach a certain value of various vitamins, minerals, and amino acids. At the same time, they convert the polysaccharides in the nectar into monosaccharides glucose and fructose, which can be directly absorbed by the human body. The moisture content is less than 23% and stored in the nest, sealed with beeswax. Honey is a supersaturated solution of sugar, which crystallizes at low temperatures. The crystallization is caused by glucose, while the part that does not crystallize is mainly fructose.
Introduction to Royal Jelly
Royal jelly, Chinese medicine name, is a milky white gelatinous substance secreted by the hypopharyngeal gland and the postpharyngeal gland of honeybees such as Apis cerana Fabr. It has the effects of nourishing, strengthening, benefiting the liver, and invigorating the spleen. It is used for post-illness weakness, malnutrition in children, senile physical decline, decreased white blood cells, protracted and chronic hepatitis, duodenal ulcer, rheumatoid arthritis, hypertension, diabetes, functional uterine bleeding and infertility, and can also be used as an adjuvant treatment for cancer.
Benefits of Royal Jelly and Propolis
1. Propolis has natural preservative, antibacterial, sterilization, and antiviral effects. It can improve the body's immunity, inhibit tumor cells, relieve pain, lower blood pressure, lower blood sugar, and improve liver function. It also has the function of purifying the blood, especially for the blood and blood vessels. It has almost no side effects and can be eaten every day. Only through long-term use can one experience the magic of propolis.
2. Royal jelly is a natural health food. The content of 10-hydroxy-2-decenoic acid is an important indicator. The content of 10-hydroxy-2-decenoic acid is affected by bee species, feed, larval stage, season, time, and yield. The low-yield royal jelly is higher than the high-yield royal jelly; the feed with mixed pollen is higher than the single pollen; the one-day-old royal jelly is higher than the two-day-old royal jelly; the spring and winter are higher than the summer and autumn.
It is a special food that only queen bees can eat. Royal jelly is a nutritional treasure that supports the amazing vitality of queen bees.
3. The raw material of royal jelly is pollen collected by bees from fresh flowers, digested, decomposed, and generated in their bodies, and then secreted from the hypopharyngeal gland and the mandibular gland, which is royal jelly.
In the natural state, between the spring and summer when the next generation of queens is born, bees build several special cells for the queen larvae. These special cells are called "queen cells," which are similar in size and shape to peanut shells. After the eggs laid in the queen cells hatch, in order to prepare food for these larvae, the worker bees secrete royal jelly and store it in the queen cells.
The freshly produced royal jelly is a milky white creamy substance with a slightly acidic taste.
From the generation process and composition, royal jelly and honey are completely different substances.
Differences Between Honey and Royal Jelly
1. Different Sources
Honey is the honey juice collected by bees (worker bees) from flowering plants or the honeydew secreted by insects, mixed with a glandular secretion of bees, stored in the honeycomb, and brewed for more than 20 days, fully converting the polysaccharides in the honey juice or honeydew into easily digestible and absorbable monosaccharides, forming a saturated solution of monosaccharides. It should be noted that honey is processed by bees using honey juice, and most of it comes from flowering plants. Royal jelly, on the other hand, is a super nutrient substance secreted by the hypopharyngeal gland of worker bees responsible for nurturing bees and caring for queens, which is transformed by eating bee pollen and honey. Royal jelly is rich in nutrients and is called "liquid gold", the culmination of nutrition in bee products, and the crown of bee products.
2. Different Target Consumers
The nutritional value is different. In addition to providing the most important food for the bee colony and larvae, bees collect honey and pollen also serve another purpose: as food for winter. As we all know, the temperature in the beehive is always constant, mainly through the friction of the bees' wings to generate heat for temperature regulation. If there is no food such as honey in winter, bees will lack an energy source and freeze and starve to death. Therefore, honey is mainly the source of food for worker bees, nurturing bees, drones, and larvae. To use an analogy to explain the difference between honey and royal jelly: if honey and pollen are the staple food of the bee colony, the mass consumer goods, then royal jelly is bird's nest and ginseng, high-end consumer goods. Royal jelly is not something that all members of the bee colony can always enjoy. Royal jelly is exclusively provided to the queen and the queen larvae. Why can the queen continuously lay eggs and why can the queen larvae grow into future queens are all related to their continuous consumption of royal jelly.
3. Different Colors
The color of honey will change according to the color of the flowering plants collected. For example, lychee honey is light yellow, wuzi honey is orange, and autumn produced rattan honey is dark brown. Most of royal jelly is milky yellow, and spring royal jelly is more beautiful than autumn royal jelly.
4. Different Yields
The prices are different. Honey is easy to produce and the collection process is relatively easy, while the yield of royal jelly has always been very low, and the collection of royal jelly is very tedious and troublesome. Due to the difference in nutritional value and large differences in yield, the price of royal jelly is tens of times higher than that of honey.
Royal jelly and honey play important roles in people's health. Royal jelly and honey are both related and different. Through the above introduction, I believe you have a better understanding of the two. I hope that what I have described will be helpful to you.
