Quick question about eggs...

[Bogertophis]

A female snake can't lay eggs without having sex, ....

NOT TRUE! Sorry!...I have 2 large adult Florida rat snakes (yellow x gulf hammock?) that have NEVER bred (I've had them since they were young) &
every year since they've been big enough, they each lay 2 clutches of eggs, the first clutch is by far the bigger of the 2. Each of them produces more
than TWO DOZEN lovely but infertile eggs every year, which is why no matter how much I feed them (a LOT!) they are about half the size of the males.
Yes, I have 2 males, but unless they can fertilize females in another room thru the air...??? -they have never met. The males are each hefty 7' snakes.
The females are only about 5'. None of them ever turn down food...lol. They're good pets, docile & good with public "meet & greets".

Also, many years ago I lost a young desert Cal. king to egg-binding. I had her since a hatchling, she was never bred either, & vet couldn't save her.

FYI- the rosy boa that I took in from a nature museum reproduced by parthenogenesis: she had been there for about 15 years, housed with 2 other
females (for sure!) and was in very poor condition when they gave her to me. She was very stressed (they housed all 3 snakes in a single cage that
was far too small for them & not a good idea anyway) & she had been refusing nearly all food for the last 2 years, because the cage was also poorly
heated with only an over-head light, so between her age & lack of food, she had very poor muscle tone when I agreed to take her off their hands.

She did nothing but EAT for me, & digested well: about 40 small rodents (fuzzies & hoppers) that first month, then went off eating but gained weight.
I recognized the signs...later that summer she expelled a bunch of slugs and one barely-alive baby boa. I thought it must be dead at first...it was so
weak & tiny, with only one eye, a bent-neck & a few spinal bumps. Also a very slow umbilical closure. Each day I came home from work, expecting
to see a dead snake, but each day she looked back at me and drank water from my finger. So I called her Long Shot. She actually ate pinkies with
enthusiasm from my tongs, and shed a number of times, surprisingly without my help. I was totally pulling for her, but one day when she was 8 mos.
old, I found she had suddenly passed away. Most likely from some internal abnormality. She really tried to survive, but that was not her lot in life.

That is how & why I got into breeding rosy boas back then. The adult female rosy was eating like crazy for me & I could just imagine her making some
more neonates the next year that would suffer & not survive, and because she still had poor muscle tone, she had great difficulty pushing out slugs,
whereas live babies pretty much do the work of leaving. I am fussy about never breeding snakes that are too young, & breeding an OLD snake was
just as bad...but I had no good options. I got her a mate, and for the next 6* years she had LOTS of big healthy offspring. *One year, in the middle
of those, I didn't allow her to mate and she nearly died trying to expel all the slugs. So the next year I gave in...& after 5 total years of her breeding,
she finally quit on her own. She was an awesome snake, she lived 11 years with me before passing of old age (about 26+). She had nearly 50 'kids'.

So don't under-estimate the reproductive inclination of your snakes...

And Maybeka, that was not a 'dumb question'! The short answer is "maybe".