thanks for that - it was fascinating.

"even if the queen did have the intelligence to send chemical messages to send chemical messages through this whole network of chambers to tell the ants outside what to do there's no way that such messages could make it in time to see the shifts in the allocations of workers that we actually see outside the nest. so that's one way we know that the queen isn't directing the behavior of the colony."

i'm not a scientist but a question came to me from the above - isn't it possible that ants could be using a method of communication that we don't know how to measure and so know nothing about? how could that possibility be ruled out in order to make a statement like that above?
we are, after all, limited by our sensory perceptions, aren't we?