If it hadn't been for you, we 'd've had our own fertile queen!
That means relatively rapid doom for the colony, given the absence of a fertile queen; federal law prohibits the shipment of queens across state lines.
In theory, the great golden fertile queens were mated with whichever dragon could catch them in their strenuous mating flights.
A fertile queen is able to lay fertilized or unfertilized eggs.
Like most eusocial organisms, reproduction in D. laevigatus is handled by the reproductive caste, made up of the sole fertile queen and her consort males.
The queen mates with the male and the colony then splits, with many workers carrying the newly fertile queen off to establish a new colony.
Like wasps or termites, Aliens are eusocial, with a single fertile queen breeding a caste of warriors.
The colony cannot survive without a fertile queen laying eggs to renew the population.
Depending on the species, there can be either a single mother queen, or potentially, hundreds of fertile queens in some species.
