r/ButterflyGardening

Hey everyone. I’ve been raising monarch caterpillars for a little over a month. I’ve successfully released 20+ monarch butterflies so far.

I’ve been buying tropical milkweed from Home Depot for my caterpillars. Everything was going great. I went back about 3 days ago to get more milkweed and transplanted some caterpillars on it.

Yesterday I noticed green sludge/slime all over the caterpillars that I transplanted on the new milkweed. I’m pretty sure it was caterpillar vomit. And they were lethargic. I took the healthiest looking one and put it on another plant. The other ones were…I could tell they weren’t going to make it. This morning one was dead, one was missing, and one was recovering and eating.

I haven’t had trouble with the plants until I bought the new milkweed a few days ago. There’s a sign on the milkweed stand that says it’s organic, so that rules out pesticides. I examined the milkweed that made my caterpillars sick and found these yellowish, tiny orbs on the undersides of a bunch of the leaves.

They don’t look anything like monarch eggs nor do they resemble any pests I’ve looked up. And I’m thinking whatever it is could have contributed to what happened to them. Or not.

What are these things on the underside of this leaf? Help!

Thanks