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.
Scaptotrigona postica
Queens are the largest bees in the nest, averaging 38–50 mg, and are identifiable by their swollen abdomens. Also, they have more of the yellow coloring than the workers and drones. There is one queen per colony, but once virgin queens are born, they are tolerated for 15 days on average until they either leave the colony or are killed. "S. postica" queens cannot independently colonize, instead needing a group of workers to help build a new colony. While virgin queen bees must leave the colony, a queen holds her position for several years