Termite Queen Lays Millions of Eggs | National Geographic

let’s go inside one of the most
remarkable most fascinating and well
most disgusting places on earth and we
mean that in the best sense of the word
let’s go inside a termite nest a factory
ventilated by air shafts where termites
produce more termites we’re in the
Queen’s Chamber the heart of the nest
imagine you’re the queen
you’re attended by millions of sterile
worker termites who live to feed you
groom you and carry your eggs away when
you lay them you aren’t acting helpless
because you think you need royal
treatment you are helpless see a termite
Queen’s Head is nearly as small as the
rest of the termites in the colony but
she’s rendered immobile by her four-inch
throbbing pulsating egg machine of an
abdomen how many eggs can this body
produce take a guess would you say
hundreds a day maybe I don’t know a
thousand a high-performance Queen like
this one can produce well let’s do the
math
thirty thousand eggs in one day times
365 days a year that’s ten million
950,000 eggs times 15 years the life of
a queen this body will crank out 164
million 250,000 eggs in her lifetime –
huh no wonder she needs so many
attendants it’s one of their jobs to
carry all those eggs to cells where they
hatch into fragile nymphs these nymphs
will it grow up to be more workers whose
job it is to continually build and
repair the nest supply it with food and
water and care for the Queen in this
termite Factory the royal assembly line
never shuts down