Bee jelly

In another lifetime, I lived in that England place and in order to remember that things occasionally happened back home, I subscribed to the Scotsman newsletter. It still dutifully arrives each day and sometimes I read it.

One of the headlines today was about the decline in numbers of bees, and the implication this could have on crops and human survival. Very interesting, and very relevant. Mostly...

"So many hives are being found empty it has become known as Mary Celeste syndrome, after the ship that was famously found deserted."

Because, like, we don't know what the Mary Celeste was. Although, I did think it was the Marie Celeste, which is me being wrong (unthinkably!) so I'm maybe not in a position to sneer.

Anyway, bees. I'm not sure why there isn't a furore. Einstein said that if bees were eliminated from our planet, humans would follow four years later. Four years? So, there's initiatives (presumably also outside Scotland but I'm paraphrasing from the Scotsman so we don't care) to encourage beekeeping and to help them recognise and combat disease.

But what about Royal Jelly? The wondergoo that is present in everything? I can't find out our greed for it is detrimental to bees, but you'd think we could perhaps forego our own requirements of it to help save the bee. Or maybe it's good for bees to be harvested for Royal Jelly? I don't know, I can't find out, I can only find out how wonderful it is, curing cancer and wiping out world poverty with its gooey greatness. Queen bees apparently live for 6-8 years, unlike the few weeks of a normal bee - I'm guessing it's pretty disastrous if you upset the life of a Queen by harvesting her Royal Jelly. Or maybe it helps? Beekeepers can intervene and feed Royal Jelly somehow to larvae to produce Queens. Could the import of Royal Jelly have caused the increase in parasites that are being blamed for the decline? I'll go for now on the assumption that if there was a link between Royal Jelly harvest and bee decline that someone would have noticed. They would have, wouldn't they?

EDIT: some people have noticed that the parasite may have been carried in Royal Jelly from China. If that's true, we're not harvesting them to death, we're nursing them to death.