Test Tube Queen: Ant Colony

It starts with one queen in a glass test tube, a little water behind a cotton plug and a handful of white eggs.

Test Tube Queen is a calm, realistic ant-keeping game built on the real hobby. Keep your colony the way real keepers do, and watch every decision play out on the glass.

THE REAL HOBBY, GENTLY
• Cover the tube with red film: ants can't see red, so it's night for them and a window for you.
• Put the heat mat under one end only, and see the nurses carry the brood to the warm side.
• Feed sugar water for energy and insects for the larvae. Clear leftovers before they mould.
• Watch the tube's water. When it runs low, connect a new nest and the colony moves house by itself, carrying every larva and cocoon.
• Give temperate species their winter rest, so the queen wakes strong in spring.

YOUR DESK, YOUR LAYOUT
Slide test tubes, Ytong nests and outworlds anywhere on the desk and run the tubing yourself: pull a tube from a brass nozzle to join two modules, snip it to close a path. The ants walk every tube you lay.

GEAR, GALLERIES AND A LOUPE
• Dig nests where the ants carve their own tunnels as the colony grows.
• A thermo-hygrometer, a thermostat, water tubes, feeders and decor for the outworld.
• Keep it clean: waste breeds mites, rotting food brings fungus gnats.
• A magnifying glass to follow any ant, and a camera for your colony album.

A MENTOR WHO SHOWS, NOT TELLS
Master Keeper Nell walks you through your first colony step by step: you do each thing, and you see what it changes. Later, she's there the first time something new happens: the first mould, the first move, the first autumn.

EGG, LARVA, PUPA, WORKER
Development follows real biology and temperature. Your first workers are tiny nanitics raised by the queen alone; the colony grows from a handful to hundreds and then thousands.

REAL SPECIES
Start with the classic black garden ant, Lasius niger. Earn the silky ant, or add pavement ants, carpenter ants, seed-harvesting Messor and big-headed Pheidole with their giant-headed majors. Each lives by its own rules.

KIND TO YOUR TIME
One real minute is one hour in the colony, so a colony year passes in about six days. Check in a few times a day; nothing dies while you sleep.

• No energy timers, no pay-to-win. The whole Lasius game is free.
• Ads stay out of your way: an optional video for an extra time-lapse, and at most a short break every few hours.
• Keeper Pro (weekly, yearly with a 3-day free trial, or once for life) removes all ads and unlocks every species.

A note from the keeper: real ants belong in their native habitat. Never release ants outside their natural range.

Terms of Use (EULA): https://m2lab.tech/en/test-tube-queen/terms/
Privacy Policy: https://m2lab.tech/en/test-tube-queen/privacy/