The Butterfly Movement

My neighbor, Pat Murphy, stopped me on the sidewalk recently. She wanted to confess that she had gone through my gardens in search of butterfly larva on my abundant supply of milkweed. She found four tiny striped butterfly babies at the top of my plants and took them home to nurture them through the four steps leading to them becoming monarch butterflies. The teeny tiny voracious herbivores are barely visible to the naked eye when they hatch from their pin point sized eggs, but they grow fast!

Pat & Beth with mature caterpillar
Photo by Roxanne Wightman

Pat purchased a butterfly cage just in time for her healthy full grown caterpillars to begin building their chrysalis. All four larva from my gardens made it through the life cycle and Pat was excited to tell me that she released them.

Tiny larva next to Pat's thumb
Photo by Pat Murphy

Pat's Nursery Area
Photo by Pat Murphy

FIVE caterpillars!
Photo by Pat Murphy

Chrysalis City
Photo by Pat Murphy

SUCCESS!!! Butterflies!
Photo by Pat Murphy

Pat's Butterfly Cage
Photo by Pat Murphy

Pat with her cage, pointing out a larva
preparing for the chrysalis stage

Caterpillar moves into J shape
before forming Chrysalis

Pat's butterfly project quickly became a movement. We began researching the monarch life cycle and were surprised to learn that only about 5% of all butterfly eggs survive to adulthood. The females lay from 1-500 eggs, one egg at a time. If you watch, you can witness them landing on milkweed, tucking their bottom under a leaf and dropping an opaque egg. Once the egg is laid, it matures on the leaf for about 4 days before hatching. The tiny larva eats the nutrition packed shell then begins to devour milkweed leaves for about 10 days. Just before the larva begins to morph into a chrysalis, it climbs to the top of the plant and spins a silk mat. It stabs a stem into this mat and hangs upside down. The translucent green pupa is formed from the head (bottom) up. After 10-14 days, the butterfly begins to emerge, unfolding itself from the chrysalis with wet wings. The entire process takes about one month.

Image by Monarchlab.org

Armed with all this information, we started collecting larva and eggs, excited to help this beautiful insect multiply. We learned to keep the eggs in covered plastic bins lined with damp paper towels. Once they hatched we moved them from this nursery to a preschool of sorts where they literally eat and poop and rest and molt until they get longer and fatter. Eventually they are moved to the mesh cage where they munch all day getting really long and really plump. They poop a lot and the cage must be cleaned daily then washed with a 5% bleach solution between generations. As they grow, the larva or caterpillar sheds its' coat several times. This is called molting. The time between molts is called instar. There are five instar stages.

To identify each instar stage click here:  Instar Stages of a Butterfly

Tiny Translucent egg, look closely for the ridges along the side

New hatchling, eating it's nutrition packed egg
photo zoomed from original

Hatching larva leaving egg. White end is egg, black end is head.

Egg and larva on one leaf
Egg is the size of a pin head, larva is not visible to naked eye

Two tiny larva on one leaf
Each larva is about 1/16th of an inch long

Munching catapillar

Caterpillar at top of cage, ready to build chrysalis

Caterpillar moving in "J" shape

Beautiful Chrysalis

We were finding so many eggs that Pat began to recruit foster homes. She asked our neighbor Roxanne Wightman if she would be interested in raising Monarchs. Roxanne was quickly convinced to join us and began her own brood. Roxanne keeps a journal, documenting the developmental phase of each egg she collects. It has been interesting to see how we each run our monarch breeding farms in different ways.

Roxanne's Journal
Photo by Roxanne Wightman

Roxanne's Journal
Photo by Roxanne Wightman

Two mature caterpillars on one leaf
Photo by Roxanne Wightman

Roxanne's Cage
Photo by Roxanne Wightman

Monarch raising aids
Photo by Roxanne Wightman

Pat looked for more foster parents and found that people were interested and excited to be part of the Butterfly Project. At this time there are nine of us working on building the monarch population in our town. Coincidentally, we are seeing a greater number of butterflies this season, including types of swallowtails.

Yellow Tiger Swallowtail on Coneflower

I was acting as the neighborhood egg collector for a few weeks but ordered my own butterfly cage after finding a good sized larva on my plants. I was hoping it would arrive in time for my "baby" to enter the pupa stage inside the cage. Pat is so excited at the interest and hard work of her recruits. She calls the response "The Butterfly Movement"; a bunch of small town ladies helping in a small way! By the time the season is over, we expect to release over 100 monarch butterflies into our gardens. Pat has nicknamed our street "Butterfly Alley"!

Female monarch gathering nectar

A quiet moment

Monarch on Butterfly Weed

Monarch collecting nectar

Monarch laying an egg on Butterfly Weed

Butterfly & Bee Tea Party

To learn more about raising butterflies in your home click here:

Monarchlab.org