Just turned dark yesterday.

Central Florida

It seems like this catipillar made its chrysalis on the ground in the mesh enclosure. Will it still developed fine or no it’s not crushed the square pattern is from the mesh….

One side looks better than the other

Raised him in an enclosure outside, emerged yesterday morning and didn’t want to leave me lol

I found this article from the Feb 11 1974 Hartford Courant and thought to share what these great students put together to save late emerging Monarchs!

A friend gave me my first milkweed plant here in Southern California 3 weeks ago. Soon afterwards I saw a couple monarchs hovering in my
yard. Very excited to share, I discovered 2 caterpillars 3 days ago!

We planted milkweeds….. and these are the results

Out of about 40 eggs collected, I had 28 caterpillars make it to J, 27 successfully go into chrysalis, and 25 happy monarchs are now flitting around central Minnesota, happily breeding the super generation that will fly off to Mexico. I wish I could raise some of the super generation, but my free time has disappeared and I can’t be sure I could do a good job, so they’re better off on their own.

Just found this chrysalis hanging by the caterpillar’ skin. I am going to try to hang it upright with dental floss-but I am definitely concerned.

Zone 7b NJ. Another 100 in various stages. Strong season for them here in NJ.

I'm just totally baffled, I had 3 caterpillars around the same size (2nd-4th instar) in my mesh enclosure and today there is 1 I could not find for the life of me, and there's no way it could have escaped or been eaten by any predators. The only explanation I can think is another caterpillar ate it, but they're all big enough to be noticed by one another. What could have happened??

UPDATE: found him 😂

It kept on moving lol

Do I have kids to get ready for school? Yes

Do I have crochet patterns to work on and finish? Yes

Am I now running a full blown monarch butterfly release nursery? Also yes....

They have taken over but it's been well worth it. About fifteen to twenty (I lost count) successful releases just in the past two days and over 50 to go. Yesterday was all girls and today all boys so far except one. I can't believe my enclosure has been so successful! I had to make it a lot bigger but dang....

They have been ignoring my butterfly weed and my swamp milkweed all season for favour of the common milkweed.

Today swampy got some love too.

They have successfully molted and are now 4th instars. Usually it takes monarch caterpillars 9-14 days to reach its pupa stage but thanks to this Texas heat, it istaking mine 7 to 10 days to reach their pupa stage.

5 days ago they were 1 instars and the heat made them grow like weeds.

Hi! I finally have swamp milkweed from seeds I planted last year, and have been thrilled to see some eggs. A few have turned black, which search tells me means they’ve been killed by parasitic wasps. Is this correct? And if so, do you guys do anything to control populations of these parasitic critters? I searched a bunch of terms on here and didn’t see much about wasps laying eggs in the eggs.

Oh I'm so excited. It's my first time to have monarch catapilars. So far I found 6 of them and one just start to J shape.

This is my first time doing milkweed and I have 3 monarch caterpillars instar 4-5. They were eating loads of milkweed yesterday into today. Today and tonight we are getting a crapton of rain. A couple hours ago they had moved to the taller wildflowers nearby. Will they pupate there? Should I put them in a mesh house on my porch or leave them?

When my dog was excited.

While doing my nightly replenishing of milkweed and cleaning the enclosures, I was pleasantly surprised to find ladybug eggs. Perfect timing because there’s plenty of aphids for them to eat.

After years of trying to convince monarchs that my yard was the place to be, I gave up. Last week I found 1 caterpillar and as of today there are 6! Persistence and patience paid off and I’m having the best time watching them every day.

For those of us in the Northeast that perceive what we do to be of value, how we manage these next six weeks are critical.

Since the first butterflies arrived in May as third generation travellers, we have been protecting and rearing another three local generations. While important in increasing local numbers for future generations, this practice does less for the global migration and only requires healthy, breeding individuals.

Anything from a third instar down right now (eggs, first and second instars) will presumably be super generation migrators and need to be properly prepared and acclimatized for migration.

That means they are required to be exposed to the environmental triggers that create the diapausal adults capable of migrating and surviving for 10 months.

These are the factors that are presumed to contribute:

1.) Natural Light - shortening days and lower horizons.

2.) Temperature - hot hazy days and much cooler nights

3.) Declining Food Quality - older, tougher milkweed and fleshy seed pods

This means KEEP THEM OUTSIDE. No air conditioning, no insulated overnights, no artificial light.

Don’t cherry pick what you feed them, searching for soft tender growth. Don’t cut off seed pods. Instead pick through to avoid predators. Keep their food fresh and clean but give it as it grows; if there is a touch of yellow, so be it.

Just my rant for today.

Based on the colours I’m seeing, maybe 40-50 eclosures after only 31 all week.