The Development Of Royal Jell-gathering Machine And A Multi-functional Activities Clip-on Queen Cage

With the increasing of the labor costs and the gradual aging of the beekeepers, the producing methods of royal jelly, which is the main bee product and one of the main economic sources for beekeepers in China, are in urgent need of modernization. In this study, we designed a royal jelly-gathering machine, which mainly includes the beeswax-cutting device and the spray royal jelly-gathering device, based on the non-grafting larvae royal jelly production technology. The development of this machine was aimed at mechanizing the three main steps of the traditional royal jelly production process, which includes cutting royal cells, clipping beeswax and gathering royal jelly manually, at the same time it took into account the convenience and practicality.Using the bionic non-grafting larvae royal jelly ovipositor and the royal jelly-gathering machine, we analyzed the effect of the nozzle angle, nozzle pressure, nozzle type and pore size, the screen and its distance from the work platforms on efficiency of gathering royal jelly, and determined the optimal parameters of the royal jelly-gathering machine. Then, we compared the difference of productive efficiency between mechanized and manual royal jelly production processes. The results showed that the royal jelly-gathering machine should be used under the conditions of nozzle angle 45°, nozzle pressure 8KPa, 1.6mm aperture cavity under sprinklers and 18 mesh stainless steel 10 cm away from the work platform. With the increase of the number of the bar for royal jelly yielding, the efficiency of the royal jelly-gathering machine is much higher than that of manual operation. The work efficiency of the beeswax-cutting device was 173.26%-431.26% higher than that of cutting royal cells manually when the number of the bar for royal jelly yielding was 3 and 6. The work efficiency of the spray royal jelly-gathering device was 81.52%-245.74% higher than that of clipping beeswax and gathering royal jelly manually when the number of the bar for royal jelly yielding was 3, 6 and 12. The work efficiency of the royal jelly-gathering machine was 87.95%-175.03% higher than that of cutting royal cells, clipping beeswax and gathering royal jelly manually when the number of the bar for royal jelly yielding was 6, 12 and 24.Moreover, we developed a multi-function clip-on queen cage according to the purposes of all kinds of queen cages used currently. This queen cage has the merits of simple structure and easy operation, and can be used to cahch the queens, cage queens in winter and introduce new queens into colonies.The successful application of the royal jelly-gathering machine and multi-function clip-on queen cage will provide some technical support for the mechanization of royal jelly production and Apiculture.