"I have 6 ants in the colony, including the queen."
"Today there are now 7 ants! Welcome little one!"
"The colony is 16 ants now."
"It's about uh I think 30 ants?"
"There are a lot of ants."
"I tried to count it is definitely more than 200. Wow."
"There are probably a few hundred in the outworld and IDK in the nest. 500? Who knows. They won't hold still."
"I think they might weigh about a half pound?"
"There is a human brain mass of ants."
"SO MANY ANTS."
Thing is... you might think of this like population growth, like rabbits: if you have more rabbits they give birth to more rabbits.
But a colony has only one queen. All of the ants have the same mother. The constraint factor on growth is having enough nurse ants and foragers to feed and care for the next generation. Somehow the queen senses the need to lay more eggs and boy can she go! Up to 100 eggs a day in the high summer for some species.
@futurebird hm. I would have guessed the amount of eggs a queen can lay would be nearly proportional to the amount of food the workers can feed her, until she approaches some maximum limit, at which point it should level off?