Ant Queens Forge an Empire | Empire Of The Desert Ants | BBC Earth

For the founding queen, sharing her nest with all these rivals seems like madness. But the economics of desert survival is a numbers game. And for the moment at least, this communal life is the key to her future. Each queen now lays her first batch of tiny eggs, each no bigger than a pinhead. Many new nests contain two or three queens, limiting the initial brood to less than 100 eggs. But these 10 queens have produced well over 300 eggs. And when they hatch, the colony will become an instant superpower. For the founding queen, this is the main advantage to taking in lodgers. If the eggs are not kept clean and coated with antibiotic saliva, they would quickly be smothered by fungi and rot away. The eggs soon hatch. Fed by the queens, the voracious larvae grow quickly and then pupate. A few weeks after the eggs were laid, the first tiny pale workers emerge from these silky cocoons. All ant workers are female and sterile. Unable to reproduce themselves, their sole purpose in life is to serve the queens. They darken as their bodies become harder and then they are ready to take up their duties. Some stay underground, tending to the queens and to the remaining brood. Others head for the surface for a first look at their strange new world.