Royal jelly extraction spatula

01 · THE HARVEST

You work on the bar out of the hive, not inside it

Harvesting does not happen between frames. The cell bar frame comes out, goes somewhere sheltered from the sun, and there the cups are emptied one by one: the blade runs down the wall, sweeps the bottom and drags the jelly up to the rim. All you scrape is the wall of the cup, plastic or wax, so nothing in this step touches comb or hive structure. And the less time the jar spends open the better: the jelly goes into the cold straight away.

02 · LARVA FIRST, JELLY AFTER

The larva comes out before you scrape

Inside the cup the larva floats on top of the jelly. Scrape with it still there and it bursts, and what ends up in the jar carries haemolymph and larval remains. The order is to lift it out first with a clean tip and empty the cup afterwards, as our grafting bars already say. Two separate moments: grafting puts the larva into the cup, harvesting empties that cup 48 hours later.

03 · THE SEASON

Royal jelly is a spring job, not a year-round one

Filling cups takes a colony with plenty of young nurse bees and nectar and pollen coming in; without that, acceptance drops and the cup stays half empty. That lands in early spring, and our own orders trace the same curve: 51 % of the units sold go out between March and May. Treat it as planning data: have the spatula before the first graft.

04 · WHERE IT RUNS OUT

One cup per pass sets the ceiling

A single bar of 33 cups means 33 passes; a double bar of 66 means twice that, plus lifting out every larva. For one or two bars that is a session at the bench; for a full day across several frames the hand gets slow, and that is where the eight-head collector or the aspirator, which sucks the cup out through a tube, take over. This spatula is the entry-level tool.

05 · BEFORE YOU BUY

It ships as one loose unit: no bar, no cups and no jar included. It belongs to no closed rearing system —it works with plastic or wax cups as long as the tip goes in without forcing— and the published measurements, 150 × 9 × 3 mm, are the outline of the piece. Wash it in hot soapy water and disinfect it with 70 % v/v alcohol before and after each use.