Royal jelly is a honey bee secretion that is used in the nutrition of the larvae. It is secreted by young worker bees and used (among other substances) to feed all of the larvae in the colony, including those destined to become workers. If a queen is needed, a larvae is chosen and will receive only royal jelly – and in large quantities – as its food source for the first four days of its growth, and this rapid, early feeding triggers the development of queen morphology, including the fully developed ovaries needed to lay eggs.

I was at Yale Law School a few weeks ago and we were talking about the number of America’s leaders that went to school at Yale or Harvard. Some of the best and the brightest from all classes of our society are selected as children and given the human equivalent of an additional dose of royal jelly.

The primary ingredient in human royal jelly is education. and although both schools tend to select broadly from across the community they select only young people who started out smart and were fed a lot of royal jelly.

What do you need to be on the fast track for “American royalty”? The children of royalty have a huge advantage (Al Gore and George Bush as examples) but really smart people from every strata have a chance (Bill Clinton and Barack Obama) all they need is “human royal jelly.”

In humans hereditary intelligence is only part of the path to success. In the same way that honey bees nurture a queen by feeding her royal jelly, human parents and communities can create royalty by feeding the brightest of our young people massive doses of education.