A different question.

[Johnathan]

My 2 Tetramorium Immigrans queens have been in test tubes in the dark for a month. They had laid eggs by day 3. I checked because one of the queens had been caught a few days ago and I hadn’t had a test tube. I kept her in a medicine bottle with a moist paper towel corner. To move her into the tube she had to abandon her eggs. I tried to move em with a q tip but I was unsuccessful. I decided to check to make sure they laid eggs again. They both did, and I resolved to just keep a special watch on the first queen. Other than that I checked day 10, 20, 22 to make their small Outworld in advance, 25, 30, and today because this is my first colony and I could be seeing workers any day now. You might be wondering why this belongs here, but I’m not wondering what species it is, I’m wondering what stage the ants are in. Being my first colony, I can’t tell pupae and larvae apart in my short glances in. In the past few checks I decided that the odd shaped ones are the larvae. I’m not sure about it but it’s a safe bet. What I do want to know about is what I saw today. I saw what I believed was a pupae, but it was a brownish color, with a tint of red maybe? Is this about to be a worker ant? I know they are born pale but I wanted to know because any info tends to be helpful info someday.

[EarthStudent]

I don't know how much help I will be because I'm still a noob myself. I think Tetramorium immigrans has bare pupae (no cocoon) which I think makes it harder to tell the difference between the larvae and pupae. But if you look close enough it's not difficult to tell. Both are white but the larvae look like stubby worms (no noticeable legs) or look like maggots if you know what those look like. The pupae start looking like an ant with it's legs tucked into it's body. I'm not sure what to look for as far as when it's going to be an adult ant but if it's Tetramorium and you are seeing pupae, it's not going to be long. From what I understand they go from egg to ant pretty fast compared to larger species like Camponotus pennsylvanicus which take much longer to develop.