r/MonarchButterfly

Picked up this little fella 4 days ago while gardening. It’s my first time keeping a 🐛 and caught the pupation on video🥳.

I found where the monarch's are going through their chrysalis stage, see previous post. I decided to do a closer inspection of my milkweed bushes and am stunned by the number of caterpillars. There must be 30 to 50. My questions are: 1) What are these bugs, do I need to get rid of them, if yes, how do I do that safely without harming the caterpillars? 2) Are these caterpillar eggs? They are EVERYWHERE!

I know it comes at no surprise for this reddit. It's my first time rearing this year and I can't get over how adorable and goofy they are. 🥹 Chonky sausage with little boots and TV antennae and button nose.

Feeling overwhelmed. Already have a lot of cats in an enclosure but the monarchs won’t stop!! The new growth is covered in eggs and small cats. I know I can’t save them all but my god I will have to go collect more milkweed from the neighbouring houses soon ha!

I planted a native guerilla pollinator garden in a sidewalk cutout near my place - 10a for what it's worth. Both the milkweed and monarch caterpillars are going gangbuster, but the problem seems to be the fact that there's nowhere nearby for them to cocoon up - it's only sidewalk, street, and parked cars for many feet in any direction. I should have thought of this before I planted, but I didn't.

Is there a structure or device I can place in this garden that will attract monarch caterpillars in terms of forming their cocoons, like sort of a birdhouse type thing? I only have 22 square feet to work with, so it needs to be small.

Thank you!

Found this guy on my milkweed this morning. he is missing one of his feelers, has some weird spots on his back and the leaf is covered in green liquid. I thought the liquid was black but when it got on a paper towel it is green. I removed it and put it in a jar just in case but I dont want him to suffer if something is wrong.

I designed & created these monarch earrings and figured this sub would like them! I’ve always loved monarch butterflies and have great memories of raising them with my third grade class together. These are definitely the hardest earrings I’ve designed so far, even compared with my other butterflies. I tried my best to get the patterns correct, but the wings are just so intricate.

We got to watch a monarch caterpillar form a chrysalis on our roof!! This was literally the most exiting thing to happen all summer!! Here are the pictures from start to finish. From July 24th to August 6th! I also caught a video right after they transformed to a chrysalis🥰😊 hope you guys enjoy these pictures❤️

This one settled right outside my greenhouse. The shape is unusual.

I’ve found a system. If you are someone like me that finds yourself in a town that sprays for mosquitos… here’s the system.

1. Request the schedule
2. Buy a small greenhouse frame and cover.
   Cover once the sun goes down, remove when the sun comes up.

Clip and collect anybody you find before the spray. Get a butterfly enclosure and keep it OUTSIDE. Bring it in the night they spray bring it back out the night after.

My numbers have went through the roof and I am on track to release 20+ up from TWO last year.

First time monarch caterpillar keeper! Had a bit of an incident while pupating where it fell (onto soft surface) but it appeared untouched, so I gently reattached to the mesh ceiling. Could that have potentially influenced anything?

It only emerged around 30 minutes ago, so maybe it’s fine and just fell before its wings were ready? How do you tell?

Not sure what to do from here, if anything. Or, should I just put it down? Either way, poor thing :(

Hello! Some of you may have seen this post of mine yesterday, and I’m pleased to say that after over 36 hours of staying still, this little guy has FINALLY moved and possibly moulted overnight, as one of his filaments looks a lot longer. However I can’t help but notice that one of his filaments appears longer than the other! Is that a bad sign?? Did he have a rough moult, maybe?

I found him on the ground this morning, sitting on a dead brown leaf, so I placed it on the milkweed to give him easy access to food and to keep him out of sight of any predators. However, as far as I can tell, he hasn’t eaten any of the milkweed yet and just kind of keeps pacing back and forth on this one leaf waggling his filaments and occasionally looking around. I hope he isn’t sick or injured, but he does seem to be pretty dang resilient LOL

I started with 15. I didn’t know there was anything on the milkweed I bought, I’d been washing it but apparently not well enough. As soon as I realized the plant was probably the problem I was very careful with cleaning leaves and cats and enclosures to prevent/remove anything harmful. I quarantined based on behaviors and I cleaned the enclosures with a 5% bleach water solution and then water and Castile soap. And all leaves were cleaned with Castile soap and rinsed and dried with clean paper towel. After a couple died, some were sick and I had to euthanize the ones that were obviously suffering, but my last two were THRIVING and eating and growing. Suddenly this weekend the big one slowed down eating and died this weekend and I just found my last one, curled up and cold to the touch. Antennas are limp, occasional movement. I know what I need to do, but I just want to learn from this experience. Can anyone help me figure out what I did wrong? I want to try again, but I feel like a failure.

Note how he slows down a tiny bit when he comes to a vein in the leaf

I'm new to this and this is the only milkweed I could find around me at the moment, but I don't want to use this if it may harm the caterpillar.

UPDATE: I thought my caterpillar was avoiding the milkweed because of those black spots, but it looks like he was just trying to avoid the food to find a place to molt. Sorry for my ignorance guys, I saved this lil cutie and the eggs from getting mowed down so I'm trying to learn this stuff as quickly as possible lol

There are so many of them here in the yard it’s crazy! I just want to know if there is anything I can do to encourage their natural process like making sure to keep certain pests away or should I just leave them be entirely and let nature do its thing & just enjoy being witness to the process as much as I can. They feel precious ya know? 🖤💛🖤🧡🖤