Narrator: This sticky, white, milky cream
is royal jelly.
And within a hive, it is specially reserved for queen bees.
Also known as the "superfood of the beehive,"
it is more nutrient-rich than honey
and is 20 times more expensive.
Queens live 50 times longer than other bees,
and while there is no scientific evidence for it,
the health-food industry is determined
to attribute this longevity to royal jelly.
And now people are eating it too,
for $125 per pound.
But harvesting this elixir can be painstaking
and can only be done by hand.
If it's done incorrectly,
young queen bees can be killed in the process.
So, is royal jelly really worth it?
And why is it so expensive?
Narrator: Zuozheng has been harvesting royal jelly
for decades.
Narrator: He travels all over China to raise bees
and keep up with the rapeseed-flower season.
Rapeseed flowers have bright yellow petals
that are wide at the tip, allowing bees
to collect more nectar and pollen than other flowers.
It's during this time that the beehive population
is largest and most productive, which is ideal
for harvesting lots of high-quality royal jelly.
Zuozheng traveled 600 kilometers to get here,
in Shayang County, Hubei Province,
to raise his bees.
He arrived four months ago,
and today, he's starting to harvest royal jelly.
Narrator: There are three types of bees born in the hive:
workers, which are sterile female bees;
drones, the male bees;
and queens, which are the fertile female bees.
As larvae, all bees grow in these tiny cells
and consume royal jelly.
But once the queen emerges,
only she is allowed to feed on it.
Narrator: Beekeepers like Zuozheng
maximize royal-jelly production
by removing the queen.
He will place it in a separate part of the box,
away from the hive.
The bees will work quickly
to feed all the potential queen larvae.
It takes workers 72 hours
to fill the larvae cells with jelly.
Zuozheng also creates multiple artificial cells,
which he fills with fresh larvae taken from other hives.
Narrator: Too much force can destroy larvae
or future queens.
Zuozheng needs to keep them alive in the cells
so he can get as much jelly as possible from the workers.
Narrator: With 64 cells in each strip,
Zuozheng will fill thousands of queen cells
throughout the harvest.
In exactly 72 hours,
Zuozheng checks on his boxes of hives.
He removes the cells from the hives
and cuts off the beeswax seal on top of each cell.
He needs to remove each larva
from inside the jelly-filled cell.
Because of the tiny size of the larvae,
this task also must be done by hand.
Narrator: There are many consumers
who also purchase the larvae.
In fact, the demand for queen larvae
is just as high as royal jelly.
Narrator: He now can sit and delicately collect
the royal jelly from inside each cell.
Narrator: To extract 1 kilogram of royal jelly,
Zuozheng has to empty at least 2,000 queen cells.
Narrator: Royal jelly sourced
from rapeseed flowers here in Hubei
can sell for over $250 for a single kilogram abroad.
Narrator: The reason behind this price discrepancy
is their nutrients.
Honey is mostly made up of sugar,
while royal jelly also contains proteins
and other minerals, most still unknown.
Being richer in nutrients than honey
has linked royal jelly
to a variety of health-benefit claims,
like being an aphrodisiac or a key to long life.
But most have yet to be confirmed by scientific evidence.
These beliefs come from seeing
what happens to the bees that consume royal jelly.
Queen bees grow 1 ½ times larger than other bees.
They have a lifespan of seven years,
while a worker bee lives just six months,
and they can lay up to 3,000 eggs in a single day,
while workers are infertile.
But that may not be linked
to the lack of royal jelly at all.
A study has shown that a worker's diet of honey and pollen
contains natural chemicals that make them infertile.
Narrator: Royal jelly can be found in beehives
all over the world, but it's China
where 90% of the world's production comes from.
Production took off in the 1980s
when Chinese beekeepers started using
a variety of high-yielding bee
called Apis mellifera ligustica Spinola.
This special breed of royal-jelly-yielding honeybees
helped ramp up production almost 2,000%
over the past 40 years.
Zuozheng has been using these bees
since he started beekeeping over 30 years ago.
Narrator: Regardless of the species,
bees are under threat.
And because of the great number of larvae killed or eaten,
forcing bees to produce royal jelly has come under scrutiny.
While lab-grown royal jelly exists,
it does not have the same benefits as the natural product,
and it even killed queen bees that fed on it.
The changing climate and the use of pesticides on crops
are also causing bees' numbers in China to diminish rapidly.
Narrator: Pesticide use has become so rampant
in parts of China that some farmers
have begun to pollinate by hand.