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 affinis
During this half-way point in the summer, any members with reproductive potential leave the nest and begin mating. The number of potential queens that can be produced is heavily reliant on the amount of nectar and pollen that can gathered during this time. Thus, a shortage of food may result in lesser queen production, and vice versa. Because solitary queens are the only members of the "B. affinis" that can initiate new colonies, the success of future colonies is dependent on queen production. Furthermore, after mating, new queens rest and enter into diapause, or hibernation for the winter. Male members and workers decline as the weather gets colder, and eventually die when winter comes. Thus, colonies live for about 4–5 months depending on the environmental conditions. Queens commonly die at different times throughout colony production, which can often lead to orphaned colonies. Queens typically live for about 77 days on average.