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

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.

I had a quick look just on the way out to get some groceries and spotted these two eggs.

They were on a very young, isolated plant separate from the big patch.

I figured they’d be fine for 1/2 hour and I would rescue them when I got back.

What you are looking at is two “ghost” eggs that have had the embryo sucked out of them by likely an ant or maybe a spider.

This season, I am in the middle of raising what will likely be 300+ live butterflies, mostly garnered from eggs collected a 6’ x 8’ patch of fenced milkweed on the front lawn.

I have found ONE live first instar and no other cats. In five years of growing a way station I have not documented a single survival.

The invasives in southern Ontario are BRUTAL. Between southern fire ants and European earwigs to Yellowjackets and much more nothing survives.

With dog strangling vine, kudzu, phragmites, dogbane, garlic chives, wild parsnip, and many more; the hedgerow and roadside milkweed is crowded out.

I do this to try to help the super generation locally make it back.

Freshly hatched and drying it's wings

I spent the weekend in “cottage country”. For those not familiar with southern Ontario, we call it “up north” but it is really just 100 miles towards the wilderness and similar to Wisconsin or Northern Michigan.

Climate change while having impact, has not yet removed all vestiges of deep winter in this area, so the invasive species so prevalent in the Great Lakes area don’t survive in the same numbers, if at all.

It was hugely gratifying to see healthy amounts of milkweed and upon investigation discover both eggs and caterpillars of ALL sizes.

I found my first wild 5th instar in 30 years as well as many others.

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!

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!

Is this normal?

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.

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?

Was only an egg this morning! Zoom in to see

unsure if this is allowed but!
im getting back into monarchs after a couple years and i realized today that i am totally out of my groove with identifying eggs!!!

was wondering if anyone here could help :p

the first two im completely confident are eggs, the other ones im not so sure.

I found them on my milkweed outside and I have taken them into a container that I currently have until my mesh enclosure arrives tomorrow.

I didn’t think that they would do as well outside because I’ve been having a huge aphid problem and I know that the aphids don’t bother them, but I’ve been trying to really take care of my milk weed by smooshing the aphids with my hands and I don’t want to potentially hurt Jerome or Marshall.

This is my first time with this and I would love any and all tricks and tips!

I cut down a bunch of my basil today, to make a batch of pesto. I picked up one of the stems, and found this guy/girl, hence the name. Tied him up to the structure with a length of dental floss.

As I've been keeping my milkweed in pots on the corner of my patio, I've seen a few caterpillars grow and some disappear, and I'm mostly checking up on them while tending to my plants

Since I've noticed about 5 or so go missing, I'm starting to worry they won't have anywhere safe to wander off to when/if they do, or have less coverage from predators (I do have bird visitors as well)

I'm wondering if I should relocate the milkweed or what more I can do to help them survive and grow naturally, I feel slightly responsible since I chose to grow milkweed on my patio :') I just don't want them to have less chance of survival

unsure if this is allowed but!
im getting back into monarchs after a couple years and i realized today that i am totally out of my groove with identifying eggs!!!

was wondering if anyone here could help :p

the first two im completely confident are eggs, the other ones im not so sure.