Hi;

Each group of sunspots lives between a few days and a few weeks, sometimes up to a few months. So during the time when there are a lot of sunspots on the Sun, each individual group is probably only a few weeks old, and they 'fizzle out' and then new ones appear. For a few years there will be lots of sunspot groups (during "solar maximum" of the activity cycle -- cycle means it comes & goes), and then for a few years there will be few or no sunspot groups (during "solar minimum).

You can see the variation by playing with some of the websites where data are saved from many years, such as http://sdowww.lmsal.com/suntoday/ or http://www.solarmonitor.org/index.php, by entering and looking at the images of the Sun over the course of many years, and see how the number of sunspot groups changes.

Cheers,

-KD