Workers do lay eggs. One could notice if you caught some worker ants of certain species and kept them separated from their colony. Without the queen they turn to laying eggs (which are unfertilized so they can only produce males) in a last ditch effort to participate in the nuptial flights.
But it might also just be a fluke, or a tendency to call all small creatures female? I don't know enough about language to say how remarkable it is to use female pronouns.
futurebird