Fresh royal jelly elixir; a shot in the arm or a shot in the wallet?

It’s been a hell of a couple of months!

Kitchen renovations dragging on, things going wrong, flu; general levels of grief way off the Richter scale. It was just as well that I was asked to try an interesting product by Bioceuticals.

This company make supplements using royal jelly as a base for a number of their products. They sent me BioBee’s® Fresh Royal Jelly Elixir to try.

Firstly before I reviewed it, I did ponder on the morality of such a product. Bees are currently on the decline and I was concerned about how a royal jelly based supplement would affect them. I found out that the welfare of the bees is very important for successful ‘production’. It is the primary food used to naturally produce a Queen bee. The consensus is; this process does not have a negative impact on the bee colonies.

Just to reiterate; during the time I was taking the Elixir, I think it’s fair to say I was very stressed. I wasn’t sleeping and not able to get out for the usual decent walk every day. Due to the disruption at home I also wasn’t eating well and in fact lost my appetite, for almost everything. There certainly wasn’t much healthy eating going on.

I deliberately didn’t read what the elixir was supposed to do; it’s easy to fall in the trap of finding what you expect to see. In the box of 10 (one a day) I took it religiously for 9 days; I gave one to my ailing decorator. Not altruistic I’m afraid; I wanted him to finish the day – which he did!

To be honest I didn’t notice any difference whilst taking the elixir. This is a common problem with supplements as unlike drugs, the effect is usually accumulative and not necessarily noticeable immediately.

My skin is not bad anyway and there was no obvious change. Royal jelly is revered for its skin enhancing properties.

Nor did I find an increased desire to seduce my husband (it does contain Damiana Aphrodisiaca; the clue is in the name).

However, then the nine days were up and I ran out of the elixir.

Oh dear.

I found myself feeling very frayed at the edges. The schedules of works at home were renamed the schedule of delays. My sleep deteriorated again and I felt very stressed. My appetite and my energy levels shrunk plus I felt very woolly headed.

It wasn’t until then that I noticed there had been a noticeable improvement whilst taking the Elixir.

This has always been a challenge with supplements; their effect is very difficult to actually measure as everyone has different biology.

Mine has been under siege for about 2 months plus I had the Royal gastric bug in the middle of it all too. It left me feeling nauseous for at least a week and a little wobbly. It was at the end of those 7 days that I started to take the Elixir, so I couldn’t tell whether I was just getting better or if it was the supplement.

I can’t in all honesty say that this supplement turned me into superwoman. I can however say that when I stopped taking it, I realised how awful I had been feeling.

I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether it’s a fantastic product or not.

However, I will be parting with some cash to buy some more; for me it was a shot in the arm.