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.
Bombus fervidus
Male bumblebees, also known as drones, have a purely reproductive purpose. In the fall, males and newly hatched queens mate before the weather cools. Each future queen mates only once and stores the sperm for the remainder of her life, using it to produce all the subsequent female progeny. After mating, young queens hibernate underground until the spring while all the other bees will die. The queens then emerge from hibernation and feed on pollen and nectar until they can lay their first brood of 8 to 10 eggs. Before laying the eggs, they build a nest out of grass and deposit honey into a wax honey pot that she made. They make and deposit honey in the honey pot after collecting enough pollen. Breeding occurs in the summer months. Most workers live for a brief period of time due to the intensity of their work, while queens live for 12 months on average. "B. fervidus" workers are responsible for making the honey that the queen and developing brood eat. The workers chew pollen and mix it with their saliva to make the honey. Since they need ample pollen for honey, workers spend a lot of time foraging for nectar and pollen, simultaneously pollinating flowers. When a worker emerges from its cocoon, it will devote most of its time toward developing the brood and consequently building a larger nest out of grass to accommodate the growing colony. If the colony grows too big, then new queens are sometimes killed before it is time for them to mate. Males have a purely reproductive purpose in the nest.