Polistes gallicus queen laying an egg in a newly started cell at the periphery of her nest.
Over the course of colony development, a feedback loop can be seen where the queen sees empty new cells and responds by filling them with an egg, and the workers see the cells being occupied by eggs and respond by building new ones. Excluding external factors such as food availability and temperature, the rate at which the nest grows and thus its final size ultimately depends on how readily the queen occupies empty cells.