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.
Solenopsis molesta
"S. molesta" queens are bigger than the workers, being four to five millimeters long. Mating takes place from July to late fall. Both the queens and "S. molesta" drones have wings, and mating takes place while flying. Queens sometimes fly with a worker or two clinging to their bodies, presumably to help out right away when the queen finds a suitable place for a colony. Queens can lay anywhere from 27 and 387 eggs per day, but the average number of eggs laid per day is 105. It takes about 52 days for an egg to become a fully mobile worker. Young "Solenopsis molesta" spends about 21 days in the larval stage when the weather is suitable.