Egg to capped in eight or nine days

A queen develops faster than either of her sisters: three days as an egg, then roughly five and a half to six days as an open larva before workers seal the cell, putting a queen cell capped at about day eight or nine measured from the egg.

That is nearly a week faster than a worker, who spends about twelve days capped, and it matters because the clock inside a swarm cell is the clock that governs everything else in this chapter.

Once capped, the developing queen spins her cocoon and pupates for roughly another week, emerging around day sixteen. She is not yet mated and not yet laying, that comes later.