Alate

Alates are ants that will eventually start their own nest and become queen (in this case, when the ruling queen dies). They Are a smaller model of the queen with wings.

Compared to real life Alates, the game's Alates can fly early after hatching, however on real life, Alates may have wings but their wings haven't developed so they have to wait til their wings have developed enough to fly.

Cost
The Alate caste along with the Super Major (Carpenter ant Only) are the most expensive of all ant castes for Fire Ants and Carpenter Ants at a cost of 100 Protein. Yellow Crazy Ants are the only species with Alates that costs only 50 protein as they're much weaker than the other Alates.Remember If you buy a Alate, it will only be available on the colony you bought it, for exapmple, if you bought the Alate on the carpenters ant colony, you will only have it on that colony.

Stats
Alates are slightly weaker than their queen, doing more damage than Super Majors but having less health than them. They have wings, which make them good at scouting for enemy ants or food. It is not advised to run into the enemy during a raid, as they don't have too much health, and experience Alate lag. Having an alate first in your colony is good but losing it is costly. Carpenter alates are so strong they can one shot a Fire ant worker and a yellow crazy ant worker with a heavy bite and can even just wipe half a fire alate's health in a heavy bite.

Becoming Queen as an Alate
They can be used as a queen's heir to throne if the queen doesn't want the new queen to have to fly to the colony, or just abandon the old colony. Alates can become queens by spamming e, although some people think the oldest alate turns into the queen, which could be true. Always be ready to spam e, although sometimes you wont get it if there are other Alates in the colony.

Flying And Scouting
This caste has wings, these wings act the same way how the Queen ant's wings are (If not broken off, or just spawned) You can press Spacebar twice to fly with the wings, but you shouldn't press it too much, or you'll just drop on the ground again. These wings are good for finding protein or spotting enemy ants/Spiders, commonly known as scouting.

Food Requirements
This caste requires you to have a full food bar when you are Larvae in order to go through the metamorphosis stage to Alate. More specifically, 30 times of being fed. Some new players who don't know how to play will probably say that they are Alate when they didn't buy it, wasting food. To avoid this, you have to ask the Person if they bought it.

Trivia

 * Alates are the only ant castes who can become the Queen without being in the lobby
 * Male Alates (Drones) Are said to be added to V2, and are already In V1 but are not available.
 * Only caste that can fly (if the queen doesn't count as a flying caste)
 * Most common caste when it comes to scouting