The Queen could sense them in her mind. Her children. She could communicate with them in the way without words. It wasn't telepathy, not as humans understood it. It wasn't pheromones either, but it was closer to that than telepathy. The speaking without words allowed the Queen to oversee and orchestrate the rise of her hive without ever leaving the nursery.
The Xenomorph looked over her eggs - the ones she could see. There were a few hundred now. She moved down the tunnel, laying more, and she showed no sign of stopping. People lined the walls, more being brought in by her children. Her children secured them to the walls with the same secretions the Xenomorphs used to remake a suitable location into a true hive.
Over months the secretions hardened into a substance that was stronger than steel, strengthening a hive through the duration of time. It always started with a nursery, of course. From there, the Xenomorphs expanded around the nursery, building layers of defense around the eggs. A mature hive could be established in as little time as three months. A hive could last for hundreds of years, a Xenomorph population thriving during all of that time. The Queen's built-in cycles helped to insure that overpopulation wouldn't occur; wiping out all of a planet's animal populations would be contrary to The Directive. Sustinence must be maintained in a proper ratio to the Xenomorph population. When there was less food, less eggs were produced and the Xenomorphs became less active. This gave the indigenous species time to repopulate.
There were times when an ecological disaster would occur, effecting the food and host source beyond repair. In these rare cases, the Xenomorph Queen served The Directive by hunting and eating her children so that she could attain the nutrients she needed to lay eggs. She would die, but the eggs endured for centuries - waiting for the arrival of another food source so that The Directive would carry on to a new generation.
The Xenomorph Queen "heard" a scream from further down the tunnel. It was coming from a host incubator. The scream ended abruptly; the Queen felt the mind of the newborn. A moment later she heard the newborn's birth screech.
It was a queen.
Fortunately, there was no shortage of food in this habitat.