I'm confused, small mealworms=small aliens and beetles?

I now have 4 very young AFT's and one very young leo. So i put aside a container of some of my small mealworms to feed to them. I had been doing this for a while with my two female AFT's before i got the newbies. So today i got out the container to count out worms for each and i find that none of the worms have really grown, a good thing since i need them small. I then found a very small alien, not a normal size at all. Has anyone seen this before? These worms have come from my own colony and as long as they remained in the bin they grew. Since moving a bunch to the smaller container (less work finding them than in a huge bin) they have not grown that big and i'm finding small aliens which i assume will turn into small beetles. Its weird cause i thought no matter what the worms would grow to the size of my adult bin full and that the change from worm to beetle only took place after they reached a certain size. I'm talking small worms, no thicker than the inside of a pen (that holds the ink) and no longer than maybe an inch.....baby worms. They have the same gutload as the worms in the bins too.

My baby geckos are eating them up so i like the fact the worms are small, just curious if anyone has seen them change into beetles at such a small size.
Thanks
Red

i bred my mealies a while back, i had about..say..5-700 babies, no longer then the tip of my finger, mealies are supposed to be in a certain temperature, i kept mine where the temps stayed at 80, alot of the babies turned into ailens but never beetles, after about 2 weeks they became black and started to smell bad, i think they morph faster when the temps are a bit higher, i keep my mealies at 70*f now and hav'nt seen an alien for a while, i only feed mealies to my insectivorous herps except my beardies(they get superworms and crickets from LLLREPTILE.COM)
so they dont last any longer than a month here..mealies are weird.. lol

ive had aliens turn into beatles in my trash can.

Well none of these aliens have turned into beetles......most have gone black. It must be something to do with the temps as Tokay Dude said but its rather cool down here right now. (((Something thats nice in the summer and sucks big time in the winter)))

Maybe the temps have gone up cause they are in a smaller container as opposed to a large bin.

Anyways, thanks for the input, i'm going to move them to a larger container and see what happens

Red

Mealworms turn into beetles. The alien things are the middle stage between worm and beetle. To prolong the life of your mealies, keep them in the refigerator. They will go in a hibernation state and wont morph and only minimal numbers will die.

Sarlina

larva(meal worm)-->pupa(alien)-->adult(beatle)

Refrigeration.......

I lost about 4000 mealworms that way. I used to keep them in the fridge all the time with no problems but then i lost that bunch. Now i've just let them go about their business and i've got a very nice colony going. What i was confused about was that i noticed the worms change into aliens ONLY after they had reached a certain size. The worms i was talking about were still very small and the aliens they produced (or changed into) were very tiny as well.

I order a few thousand mealworms every now and then to help suppliment my colony. Its great that i have the smaller worms for my babies but i was hoping that they didn't change or pupate so quickly.

Red