Which white footed ants lay eggs?

• A. Males only
• B. Queens only
• C. Worker ants
• D. All castes

Answer: (B)

The main idea is that reproduction in an ant colony is centered in the queen. The queen has the ovaries and stores sperm, and her primary role is to lay eggs that hatch into the next generation (workers, new queens, or males). Workers are typically sterile and focus on foraging, caring for brood, and nest maintenance, not reproduction. Male ants come from eggs laid by the queen, not from workers.

So, in a healthy white-footed ant colony, laying eggs is the function of the queens only. (There can be exceptional situations where workers lay unfertilized eggs to produce males if the queen is absent or not breeding, but that’s not the normal pattern.)