Beekeeping
The queen is the only sexually mature female in the hive and all of the female worker bees and male drones are her offspring. The queen may live for up to three years or more and may be capable of laying half a million eggs or more in her lifetime. At the peak of the breeding season, late spring to summer, a good queen may be capable of laying 3,000 eggs in one day, more than her own body weight. This would be exceptional however; a prolific queen might peak at 2,000 eggs a day, but a more average queen might lay just 1,500 eggs per day. The queen is raised from a normal worker egg, but is fed a larger amount of royal jelly than a normal worker bee, resulting in a radically different growth and metamorphosis. The queen influences the colony by the production and dissemination of a variety of pheromones or "queen substances". One of these chemicals suppresses the development of ovaries in all the female worker bees in the hive and prevents them from laying eggs.
Pogonomyrmex occidentalis
Mature colonies consist of up to 20,000 workers and one queen. A queen can live up to 40 years, and many colonies survive for 20 years. Colonies of the close relative, "P. owyheei", contain 1000–3000 brood items and can produce 1000 reproductives, or alates, in a year. A colony inhabits a nest that is up to deep. The queen stays at the bottom of the nest, and workers usually relocate themselves and brood within the nest, capturing safe levels of heat. A colony's nest is topped by an irregularly conical nest mound that can be more than in diameter. The composition, shape, and size of the mound differ across plant environments. The mounds of most colonies are surrounded by an area devoid of vegetation, and so do not burn during fires. The soil in the mound is drier than that in the surrounding denuded area. Bigger "P. occidentalis" colonies (in number of workers) have bigger mounds.