Nicotine seems an odd choice for hornworms, since some of them are Tobacco Hornworms. I've never seen sphinx moth larvae around plants, only on plants. Are you sure you have identified your caterpillars correctly? If they're attacking plants outside the tomato family, maybe they're something else. Bt is also available as a wettable powder or as a liquid which can be diluted and sprayed. It will often kill the big hornworms, too. Spray it right on your tomato plants. It's a biological control, not a "chemical" control. It doesn't harm bees or non-caterpillar insects. It doesn't even hurt adult butterflies and moths. It should work on feeding caterpillars even if they're not hornworms (sphinx moth caterpillars). Relatives of the Bt used for caterpillars will kill mosquito larvae and some other pests. You need to get the kind specific to the pest.

I doubt there is anything wrong with him/her. They are usually quite still for a while. What I do, is try to get them to climb onto my finger and then put them at the base of a plant so they can prepare to fly at night to obtain nectar. They don't fly during the day, so it will be nighttime before you see any activity from them. Susan

Comparing butterfly pupae to dirt pupators is not a good comparison. I have found tomato and tobacco hornworms have pupae that will eclose under most conditions. I have also found that some other sphinx pupae need favorable conditions or they die. Make sure it is on some surface that the moth can grab so it can pull itself out of the pupa. Paper towel works. It then either needs sides that it can easily climb or somewhat vertical sticks that it can easily find and climb. Proper humidity is the trick when you are dealing with dirt pupators. Since you're running A/C, maybe you should mist it every 3 or 4 days so it does not dry out. I don't run A/C so I'm guessing here. Sherry runs A/C but I don't remember if she has the pupae in the house.

Cool! I actually had some Sphinx moths around last summer, but they were Manduca Sexta, which had grown from Tobacco Hornworms. Little guys ate my tomato plants. The wings are usually a pretty good giveaway for Sphinx moths, they all are about the same shape, and look narrower than you would expect for such big moths. Actually, I'd say that the larger and more colorful a moth is, the more likely it is that you've found a giant silk moth, which are gorgeous, but they all die within a few days and don't really pollinate.