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.
List of longest-living members of the British royal family
The longest-living member of the British royal family has been Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester (1901–2004), who lived 102 years and 309 days. Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester became the oldest ever member of the royal family when she surpassed the age of 101 years and 238 days in 2003, the age at which Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother (1900–2002) died in 2002. Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother had previously set the record of being the longest-living British royal in 1998 when she surpassed the age of 97 years and 313 days, the age of Princess Alice of Albany (1883–1981) when she died in 1981. Princess Alice of Albany is also the longest-living member by blood and was the last surviving grandchild of Queen Victoria (1819–1901) and Albert, Prince Consort (1819–1861). The current oldest living member of the British royal family is Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (born 1921), who is the fourth longest-living British royal and the longest-living male British royal. Prince Philip became the longest-serving royal consort in 2009. The United Kingdom’s current reigning monarch, Elizabeth II (born 1926), is presently the sixth longest ever living British royal family member, the longest-living British monarch, and, since September 2015, the longest ever reigning British monarch.