Is it only a marketing strategy or do they really produce 7-10 kg Royal Jelly per beehive?
Just for compare, production of 10 kg of honey is normal for stationary beekeeping with extra quality. But we are talking about Royal Jelly.
You can find some articles in google scholar and some articles in science direct introducing "Chinese royal jelly".
10kg is way out of what is possible with one beehive. Specialized beekeepers manage to get about 500g per hive. 10kg is already reaching into the harvest figures for honey. As a reality check, you can also look at it from the other side: 1kg of Royal Jelly costs about US$100, which already gives you an indication of how rare it is and how difficult it is to harvest. If you could get 10kg out of one hive, that hive would be a money printing bioreactor. Many more people would jump on the train, prices would plummet and soon reach the level of rare honey.
Yvan, I found published paper wher it is wrote that productionis 7-10 kg per hive.
Nils, price for 1 kg of real, pure, royal jelly is much more then $100. That price is for "made in China" royal jelly, but can't understand what is the trick.
In a personal conversation with scientists from the Institute of plant breeding, genetics Jilin province of China, they say they get to 5 kg from one bee family. But this Northern province of China. To obtain the Royal jelly they use hybrids of the Italica. They have their own breed of honey bees, but all this mixed with European breeds honey bees.
Royal jelly production is an important market in China, and the 10kg of royal jelly per hive per year is often reported by people living there and working with honeybees. They use different methods and breeds of honeybees to increase the production, and the labor costs are probably lower than in European and North-American countries.
This reference is a good introduction:
Chen, Shenglu, Songkun Su, and Xuezhen Lin. "An introduction to high-yielding royal jelly production methods in China." Bee World 83.2 (2002): 69-77.
Also see this recently developed method to transfer eggs easily:
Wu, Xiao-Bo, et al. "A new method of royal jelly harvesting without grafting larvae." Entomological news 124.4 (2015): 277-281.