The silk case a mature larva spins around itself to pupate. Carpenter ants are cocoon-spinners; many other ants have bare pupae.
Egg to worker takes about 6–10 weeks. Eggs hatch into legless grubs (larvae) that she feeds from her own saliva; a mature larva spins a silk cocoon and pupates inside it.
Her first daughters chew their way out of their cocoons — often with her help. These first workers are “nanitics”: dwarfs, far smaller than normal workers, because she raised them on a shoestring.
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