This article proposes guidelines for quality standards of royal jelly. The proposals are based on two sets of data; the first from our study of the factors that may affect the royal jelly's chemical composition (protein and sugar supplementation of beehives) and the second on the analysis of a great number of samples from across Greece to establish natural variability of this product. We compared our findings with the adopted national limits, the proposals of the working group of the International Honey Commission (IHC), and the draft proposal of the International Organization of Standardization (ISO). The studied parameters included moisture, total proteins, sugars (fructose, glucose, sucrose, total sugars), and 10-hydroxy-2-decenoic acid (10-HDA). Our results indicate that the limits for royal jelly in some countries should be amended and the proposals of the IHC and the ISO reviewed in view of recent data on variability. We believe that our proposals could be considered for setting global standards for royal jelly, as they incorporate national legislations, proposals of scientific groups, experimental data, and updated information. KEY WORDS: 10-HDA; fructose; glucose; Greece; international guidelines; IHC; ISO; moisture; national standards; sucrose; sugar; total proteins Royal jelly (RJ) is a creamy, whitish, strongly acidic secretion from the mandibular and hypopharyngeal (cephalic) glands of nurse bees (Apis mellifera). It can change an ordinary worker bee larva, which usually lives a month and a half, into a large queen bee that can live up to five years and easily lay her own weight in eggs each day. The pharmaceutical properties of RJ for humans have been extensively studied and several claims were made regarding its beneficial effects on the immune system, metabolism, vascular and glandular function, skin health, heart function, and cholesterol and lipid control (1-4). However, these claims have been contested by the European Food Safety Authority, which concluded that no relationship has been evidenced between the consumption of royal jelly and the claimed effects (5).In spite of this unfavourable opinion, RJ is still one of the most popular beehive products in many countries. Official data on the production of RJ are not available, but it is estimated that the world production is a few thousand tonnes per year (6). China alone is estimated to produce about 2,000 tonnes per year, or about 60.0 % of the global production (7). RJ is also produced in Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Mexico, and the EU countries such as Spain, Greece, France, and Italy.Although RJ is a promising product with added financial value for the beekeepers, the industry is growing very slowly, and the local demand in many countries is covered Kanelis D, et al. A suggestion for royal jelly specifications Arh Hig Rada Toksikol 2015;66:275-284 by import from China. What largely discourages beekeepers from expanding their businesses is the lack of quality criteria and control of authenticity and geographical origin.Today, there are no s...

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The present study confirms that, in the case of presence of over-represented pollen in honeys, pollen analysis alone cannot give trustworthy results for the determination of the botanical origin, even though their exclusion during pollen analysis, when they are present in percentages of up to 30%, could provide more accurate results. Consequently, pollen analysis should also be combined with the other analyses, especially in honeys with under-represented and over-represented pollens, to give safer results for the botanical characterisation of honeys. © 2017 Society of Chemical Industry.

Bee pollen" is pollen collected from flowers by honey bees. It is used by the bees to nourish themselves, mainly by providing royal jelly and brood food, but it is also used for human nutrition. For the latter purpose, it is collected at the hive entrance as pellets that the bees bring to the hive. Bee pollen has diverse bioactivities, and thus has been used as a health food, and even as medication in some countries. In this paper, we provide standard methods for carrying out research on bee pollen. First, we introduce a method for the production and storage of bee pollen which assures quality of the product. Routine methods are then provided for the identification of the pollen's floral sources, and determination of the more important quality criteria such as water content and content of proteins, carbohydrates, fatty acids, vitamins, alkaloids, phenolic and polyphenolic compounds. Finally, methods are described for the determination of some important bioactivities of bee pollen such as its antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial and antimutagenic properties. M etodos est andar Para la investigaci on del polenEl "polen de abeja" es el polen recogido de las flores por las abejas mel ıferas. El polen de abeja es utilizado para nutrir a las propias abejas, principalmente para proporcionar jalea real y alimento para las cr ıas, pero tambi en se utiliza para la nutrici on humana. Para este ultimo fin, se recoge en la entrada de la colmena en forma de gr anulos que las abejas llevan a la colmena. El polen de abeja tiene diversas bioactividades, por lo que se hautilizado como alimento para la salud, e incluso como medicamento en algunos pa ıses. En este art ıculo, proporcionamos m etodos est andar para llevar a cabo investigaciones sobre el polen de abeja. En primer lugar, presentamos un m etodo de producci on y almacenamiento de polen de abeja que garantiza la calidad del producto. A continuaci on, se ofrecen m etodos de rutina para la identificaci on de las fuentes florales del polen y la determinaci on de los criterios de calidad m as importantes, como el contenido de

BACKGROUND: Although the main method for authentication of monofloral honey is pollen analysis, other classification approaches have been also applied. However, the majority of the existing classification models so far have utilized a few honey types or a few honey samples of each honey type, which can lead to inaccurate results. Aiming at addressing this, the goal of the present study was to create a classification model by analysing in total 250 honey samples from 15 different monofloral honey types in ten physicochemical parameters and then, multivariate analysis [multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), principal component analysis (PCA) and multi-discriminant analysis (MDA)] was applied in an effort to distinguish and classify them.RESULTS: Electrical conductivity and colour were found to have the highest discriminative power, allowing the classification of monofloral honey types, such as oak, knotgrass and chestnut honey, as well as the differentiation between honeydew and nectar honeys. The classification model had a high predictive power, as the 84.4% of the group cases was correctly classified, while for the cases of chestnut, strawberry tree and sunflower honeys the respective prediction was correct by 91.3%, 95% and 100%, allowing further determination of unknown honey samples.CONCLUSION: It seems that the characterization of monofloral honeys based on their physicochemical parameters through the proposed model can be achieved and further applied on other honey types. The results could contribute to the development of methodologies for the determination of honey's botanical origin, based on simple techniques, so that these can be applied for routine analysis.