Honeybees don't just make honey, they also make royal jelly. This high-protein secretion is produced by worker honeybees from the two hypopharyngeal glands, just inside the mouth.
The glands are long, coiled tubes, each with about 550 secretory lobes emptying into a single duct.
Despite its name, royal jelly (also called brood food) is fed to all grubs for the first three days of life.
After this, worker larvae receive the secretion diluted with regurgitated honey and pollen while the grubs that are destined to become queens continue to receive the jelly neat.
A gelatinous mass accumulates in the larger queen cells on the brood comb, on which the royal maggots feast. This gives the potential queen larvae a huge nutritional size advantage.
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