Worker larvae receive pure royal jelly for only the first three days of their lives, after which they are fed a mixture of royal jelly, honey and pollen. For example, Albert Taylor explains to his wife that it “can transform a plain dull-looking little worker bee with practically no sex organs at all into a great big beautiful fertile queen”. His descriptions of royal jelly were accurate according to scientific knowledge at the time. The story was first published in 1959 and yet these could be articles from a current journal. For instance, take the articles listed in the contents page from his bee journal: Among the Bees in May Honey Cookery Experience in the Control of Nosema The Latest on Royal Jelly This Week in the Apiary The Healing Power of Propolis. He must have done a fair amount of research to write the story. Reading the story now, I was surprised by how detailed and accurate Dahl’s descriptions of bee biology and beekeeping generally were. The strategy works, with the baby greedily lapping up this new formula and crying for more – but this new enriched milk also has some unexpected side-effects. ‘Aha’ thinks Albert – and proceeds to add royal jelly to his little girl’s feed. The article details the wonderful properties of royal jelly, including the tremendous weight gain of a honey bee larva fed on it.
He is a professional beekeeper and whilst reading his beekeeping magazine comes across an article on royal jelly. Then an idea comes to Mabel’s husband, Albert. This baby is eating so little that at six weeks old she weighs two pounds less than she did at birth. The mother, Mabel Taylor, is “half dead with exhaustion”, out of her mind with worry because the baby girl will hardly take any milk.
The plot involves a married couple who have just had a long-awaited child.
As a child my knowledge of bees was basic, so the story had a new fascination now that I’m a beekeeper. One of the books there happened to be Kiss Kiss, so I got it out specially to read Royal Jelly again. This week I was in the Barbican Library near my work and stopped to check out the returned shelves. My mum had both his Kiss Kiss and Switch Bitch collections and I re-read them quite a few times as a child, including the story Royal Jelly. If you’ve ever read Roald Dahl’s short stories for adults, you’ll know they’re very different in tone to his more famous children’s books.