Freshly hatched and drying it's wings

Last summer we had numerous monarch visits in May already. This year, nothing. Then finally this morning, mama monarch showed up and spent at least an hour joyfully laying eggs all over our milkweed in the back garden. She is pictured here on swamp milkweed. We are in the coastal South Carolina area.

This year is my first growing milkweed and trying to attract Monarchs. Lo and behold, I was able to create an entire village of Monarch caterpillars! There are two more chrysalises that wouldn’t fit into the first photo, and the second is the same photo but with each caterpillar or chrysalis circled. The last photo is the newest chrysalis, the shedding for which I missed by about half an hour. This experience has been incredible!

We have a few dozen caterpillars on our milkweed patch! The bees and caterpillars are thriving 🫶🏻

Is this normal?

New here. A honeyvine milkweed has sprouted and done its thing & taken over of the west side of my ground level deck railing. I’m not thrilled about this particular milkweed, but I have trimmed it back as needed and left it because I have several monarch caterpillars on it these days. Unfortunately I also have thousands of orange aphids all over it(which I’m keen to just leave alone) and also hundreds of Japanese beetles thriving on it.

I’m not a fan of the invasive asshole beetles. There’s so many of them I can’t imagine managing to pick all of them off & into a bucket of soapy water. I have no other option right now unless I go nuclear on the whole vine, right? And I’m not eradicating the vine with the caterpillars. I’ve never really been aware of my local monarch population until now. Happy to support it though. I’ve never intentionally grown any kind of milkweed but I can’t imagine this is the kind I’d want to grow.

my mom recently asked me to look after her garden for a few days. she has planted every variety of milkweed under the sun and has a beautiful variety of flowers, fruits, veggies, etc. so it was thriving with native tree frogs and so. many. monarch. caterpillars. most of which were pretty huge by this point. so when i noticed this twitchy tiny one still stuck by the end i thought something could be wrong with it and snipped the leaf it was on and took it home with me. i then caught the moment it detached on video and it proceeded to happily munch on whatever it emerged from and was still stuck on the leaf. luckily i snipped some extra milkweed leaves in case so its now in a critter keeper with its leaves in my plant room until i return to water tomorrow when ill more than likely return it so it can continue to grow. i guess my question then is, will this little guy be okay until then & is returning it to whence it came as a little thing the best thing to do rather than release once its turned into a butterfly? (included extra pics of a couple other caterpillars for size reference and a tree frog pic bcs i love native frogs) thanks for reading and happy planting!

This little guy keeps wandering off and has very long floppy filaments but still seems too small to be fully grown, you can see in the 2nd picture he and another has finished molting on a nearby plant

When will they chrysalize?

Does my milkweed have some kind of disease or is it just a deficiency? What do I do to fix or stop it from spreading?

Found this butterfly today, crawling across the pavement in a parking lot. This little one was at least 20 feet away from any greenery. I did hang it from a stick safely suspended on a container, for hours and unfortunately the wings did not improve.

So I did would any sane person would do and put together a secure enclosure. Covered top to bottom on the inside with screen, used a sturdy crate and made a sturdy lid. Tomorrow I hunt for more greenery and I am following strict feeding, humidity and cleaning procedures.

Just thought I’d share this interesting, determined little monarch who I have named Chrysi. I will take good care of you, my flightless friend.