Bleaching to Raise O.E. Parasite-Free Monarchs

Yes, we are obsessive people, we crazy monarch butterfly people. We want to save the monarch, and while we're at it, we probably want to save the world too!

Framed monarch butterfly print by John Corney

One of the things we obsess about is O.E. (Ophryocystis elektroscirrha - now you see why everyone just calls it "OE"), a protozoan (one-celled) parasite that infects our beloved monarchs. We want everything in the world of monarchs to be perfect: no OE, no paper wasps, no tachinid flies, no praying mantises, no aphids! You get it, we want a world filled with perfect monarch butterflies and not much else. Yes, it seems that in some way we want a sterile "Silent Spring" kind of world filled only with monarchs. But as much as we want it, we're not going to get it. If we do, I guess it means it will be the end of the world.

Anyhow, enabler that I am, this past summer I did raise one batch of OE-Free caterpillars here in 99.9% OE-Land, also known as southern California. Yes, southern California, at least the part of it I live in in Orange County, is rife with OE. It was an experiment to familiarize myself with what I had learned from the very helpful people at the Shady Oak Butterfly Farm in Florida which raises for commercial sale monarchs and many other kinds of butterflies. All of their monarchs are raised OE-free because they bleach all the eggs they raise as well as all the leaves they feed the caterpillars.

You can do the same thing too if you are just so fed up with OE-infected monarchs so below I will share with you a link to the Shady Oak video on how to bleach eggs. Just make sure you also bleach all the leaves you feed the caterpillars as they grow, and of course you need to keep the whole setup away from OE in the wild, so you need to raise these babies inside. Sterilize all your "nursery" equipment between batches. Rinse and repeat.

By the way, a 5% bleach solution can be easily made by mixing 1 part of household bleach with 19 parts of water. I used the plastic measuring top from my liquid laundry detergent, making sure it was clean of any detergent, and filled it to the top line with bleach. I poured the bleach into a large container. Then measured the same amount of water 19 times. Voila! 5% bleach solution. Good luck! Here's the link to the promised video.

http://www.butterflyfunfacts.com/bleach-butterfly-monarch-eggs.php

Pampered Monarch Butterfly Chrysalises

This is this week's batch of chrysalises. Notice that there are two monarch butterflies that eclosed today. The second one is at the bottom of the photo.

If you are wondering what the string is about, I typically leave the caterpillars to grow in my garden left to the perils of the "nature in the wild". Then often when they reach their final instar and are getting ready to go "walkabouts" to pupate, I put them each in a jar by themselves with some leaves and seal the jar with a paper towel and rubber band. I add leaves as necessary if the caterpillar is still feeding.

The caterpillars pupate on the paper towel lid and then before they get to the point of eclosing, I cut out a small piece of paper towel around the crestar (the stem the chrysalis hangs from), tie some thin nylon cord around the crestar with a non-slip knot, and then tie the chrysalis to a plant outside that is shaded. I have found that branches like this that are at approximately a 45 degree angle work best for them to hang from and dry out their wings when they eclose.

Why, you may ask, after I had left them to their own devices do I interfere with nature like this at the last minute? I admit that I find it hard not to meddle and I rationalize it in my mind by saying something like: "They ate all that milkweed and if a wasp were to eat them up at this point or some such thing, it would just be such a waste of all those leaves!" 

Monarch Lifecycle - National Wildlife Federation

If you are new to the world of monarch butterflies or doing a school project on the life cycle of the monarch butterfly, then here are a couple of great resources.

The National Wildlife Federation just published a great piece today on the life cycle of the monarch butterfly with some great pictures and video: the National Wildlife Federation version, or you can review the previous link I shared to the Chicago Nature Museum version which is all in video. Enjoy!

Tachinid Fly Infestation of Monarch Caterpillars

I seem to have a bad case of tachinid fly infestation of my current batch of caterpillars. I sometimes put final instar caterpillars into a jar since they often get eaten by the paper wasps around here and it seems like such a waste that they have eaten all those precious milkweed leaves, only to serve as wasp buffet.

Normally with tachinid fly the larvae don't emerge until the caterpillar has pupated, but recently I noticed a caterpillar had died on the bottom of the jar. When I took a closer look I noticed there were EIGHT tachinid fly larvae on the bottom of the jar! That has to be an all time record! Normally I see just one or two.

Signs that monarch caterpillars are infested with tachinid fly larvae include caterpillars in their final instars that are lethargic, and pre-pupal caterpillars that hang limply instead of in the "J position".

Check out the photos below. See my previous post for more information on tachinid flies.

Monarch caterpillar that hosted 8 tachinid fly larvae. The larvae are the red
"sprinkles". The eighth one is peeping out from the leaves.
The black "sprinkles" are friss (caterpillar poop).

Pre-pupa monarch caterpillar hanging limply indicates infection with
tachinid fly larvae. This caterpillar will die before forming a chrysalis
and the larvae will descend from mucous-like threads in the next
day or so. 

Tachinid Flies and Monarch Butterflies

Tachinid flies are small flies that look like hairy houseflies. There are something like 1300 varieties in North America apparently. They are generally considered to be beneficial in that they help control garden and horticultural pests. If you were an organic gardener you would welcome these flies to your farm or yard.

Of course, those of us who like to play God and favor one species over another are on the flip-side of the coin and consider tachinid flies mortal enemies because they prey on our precious monarch caterpillars!

Depending on the variety of tachinid fly, they either lay their eggs on the back of the head of the caterpillar or inject the eggs into the caterpillar. In the case of those eggs that are laid on the the outside of the caterpillar, the larvae burrow into the caterpillar once they emerge. So no matter what, the larvae end up inside the caterpillar enjoying the ride while feasting on our precious ones.

The larvae do not actually kill the caterpillar as they need to allow it to pupate (form a chrysalis) from which the tachinid fly larvae will emerge on mucous-like threads that reach to the ground. "3-2-1 Bungee!" (If you've even been or seen bungee-jumpers you'll get that last reference). Once the fly larvae hit the dirt, they themselves pupate before emerging as flies.

Photo by Nigel Jones at Flickr
Used under Creative Commons License

Well I kind-of sort-of figured I have tachinid flies in my garden. For a start they are nectar-eating flies and I have nectar plants for my monarchs. And I have seen flies that look like this in the photo by Nigel Jones often enough.

Well this morning I was checking some chrysalises that I have sequestered in individual jars so I can test them for O.E. for the Monarch Health research project being conducted by the University of Georgia, and I came across one of the jars with the tell-tale strings hanging down off the chrysalis. Lifting the lid I saw two larvae wiggling on the bottom of the jar.

Of course I grabbed my trusty cell phone and recorded the following video of the action for all to "enjoy". Alien III!

Monarch Butterfly Mating Frenzy

Apparently female monarchs are often reluctant mates which means the male will very often divebomb her and knock her to the ground. He has two hooks at the end of his abdomen that are used to secure the female in his grip; that's if he is successful in doing so as the female will often extend her abdomen vertically making it difficult for the male to attach himself - it is estimated only 30% of mating attempts are successful. Males and females both mate more than once.

When a male secures himself to a female other males in the area may exploit the situation and pile on as can be seen in this animated image made from several photos I took the other day. There were 4 monarchs in on this action. That poor female!

Monarch butterfly mating frenzy
Let's see how many more we can pile on here.

Wasp Eating Monarch Caterpillar - Video

Here’s a video I shot recently of a paper wasp eating a monarch caterpillar that it caught on one of my milkweed plants.


These wasps are the main predator of the monarch caterpillar in my garden here in Orange County, California. Last year it seemed that these wasps captured 100% of the caterpillars, but this year they haven’t seemed to be able to keep up with the numbers, at least to this point. In the last few days all my milkweed plants have been completely stripped bare by large numbers of caterpillars, most of them in their 5^th instar (final stage of their growth as a caterpillar). I had caterpillars wandering all over the place in search of food over the weekend. I relocated some of them to plants that had a few leaves remaining to even out the numbers on the plants, but many of them are now resorting to eating the actual stalks of the milkweed plants. So in a way this year I guess I’m a little bit happy to have the wasps taking some of the caterpillars.

An interesting thing about the wasps is that they do not seem to bother the caterpillars in their 5^th instar. I’m not sure if that really is the case, but I was observing a wasp yesterday that was repeatedly patrolling a milkweed plant that had two 5^th instar caterpillars on it, and despite actually brushing against the caterpillars on a few occasions, it never attacked them. I wondered if they were too big for its eyes to see, or a 5th instar caterpillar is too loaded with carotenoids that the wasp leaves them alone. Have you been able to observe similar behavior in your garden?

So now I am left with bare plants and the cycle goes back to square one. The plants will recover over the next couple of months, proving that they indeed deserve to be called “weeds”. I will cut the stems back a bit to encourage regrowth from the base of the stems. Meanwhile, in a couple of weeks dozens upon dozens of monarch butterflies will emerge from my garden and will hopefully find some milkweed to feed on and lay eggs on in someone else’s garden. Let’s hope we aren't all in this same predicament at the same time.

By the way, if you have landed here on my blog in the same manner that a butterfly lands in your garden – by chance – in addition to this blog I also have my Crazy Monarch Guy Facebook page, and The Crazy Monarch Guy’s YouTube channel where you can see similar videos to this one that I’ve taken of various aspects of the monarch butterfly life cycle and action captured in my butterfly garden. I would love it if you would consider liking my Facebook page and subscribing to my YouTube channel – well, that’s if you are crazy enough, I guess.

Summer Breeze - Monarch on tall verbena

I wanted to post this animated gif of a monarch on a sunflower directly to The Crazy Monarch Guy on Facebook, but unfortunately, even though you can post a gif image file to Facebook, FB does not support animated gifs. A workaround is to post the animated gif here on my website, and then link to it from Facebook. Quite a roundabout way of getting it done, but hopefully it works and you'll get to enjoy this animation of a monarch on some tall verbena blowing in the summer breeze.

Monarch on tall verbena

Monarch butterfly parasites

I have a problem, Houston! 

Dead monarch butterfly pupae - cause unknown

Recently I have had an entire cohort of chrysalises die. I don't know the cause of their demise, but perhaps it was tachinid flies, but at no time did I observe the larvae emerging on their sticky bungee cords. This is what the dead chrysalises look like. I found another three after taking this picture. Such a shame! 100% of the pupae have died. I posted the photos to Monarch Health's Facebook page and asked if they had any thoughts, to which they replied: "It could be one of a variety of pathogens/parasitoids, possibly Nosema bacteria, nuclear polyhedrosis virus, or parasitoid flies (tachinids) or wasps (chalcids)".

In this previous post, I wrote about predators that feed on monarch larvae and butterflies, specifically paper wasps and praying mantises. Today I bring to you the horrors of parasites and pathogens that use our favorite invertebrate as an unwilling host on which to feed, especially in the larval (caterpillar) and pupal (chrysalis) stage of its life-cycle.

Chalcid wasps and tachinid flies both lay eggs on or inject eggs into the monarch caterpillar. Once the eggs hatch, the larvae feed on the insides of the caterpillar. Tachinid flies time their own life cycle so that they pupate within the chrysalis and make their way through the chrysalis wall and drop to the ground from sticky threads. All sounds very yuky, doesn't it! 

Tachinid flies are typically identified by their red eyes. Here are some images of them from Flickr and Google. I actually saw one this morning on one of the milkweed plants near three caterpillars! And here are some images for chalcid wasps from Flickr and Google. Recognize any of these monsters from your own garden?

  

In the reading about parasites and pathogens that I have been doing today I have seen research that indicates that the greater and more concentrated the milkweed and caterpillar population, the greater the level of predation and concentration of parasites. I currently have a lot of milkweed plants in pots close together and I have also been bringing final-stage caterpillars from the milkweed at the front of the house to the back of the house to avoid them wandering into the street when they head off to pupate. From the density of milkweed and caterpillars there are plenty of signals to predators and parasites that host larvae are present. Perhaps I just made an easy target for the wasps or flies that might have parasitized the caterpillars, or if one had an infection, by placing them all on the same plant, the infection was spread. A bit like putting the guy with TB in the middle of a crowd of healthy people! I am learning more and more that it is best not to meddle. 

Asilidae (Robber fly or Assassin Bug)

I also caught this picture of a "robber fly" or "assassin bug" (Asilidae family) in the garden recently. These flies have a deadly proboscis that lances the caterpillar and injects fluids that immobilize the caterpillar and liquefies its insides for ingestion. More yuck! Aren't you glad you're at the top of the food chain?

Robber flies  (Asilidae) are very bristly. Their legs have long, sharp spines to hold onto the prey. Their faces have a dense coat of bristles, called the mystax, presumably to protect them from the legs and mandibles of struggling prey.

Check out more images of "Asilidae" at Flickr. 

I currently have another large batch of 5th instar caterpillars that are about to pupate. Let's hope that this will not be a repeat of the prior batch and that they will all emerge as healthy and beautiful butterflies.

Here's a good article on monarch butterfly predators and parasites from The Monarch Program: http://www.monarchprogram.org/common-monarch-predators-and-pathogens/. 

Asclepias Curassavica (Neotropical Milkweed) - Pros and Cons

Yellow-flowered Asclepias curassavica

Here are some pictures of Asclepias curassavica (common names "tropical milkweed" or “neo-tropical milkweed”). This plant is very popular currently in the US and is the milkweed variety I see most often in stores here in Southern California. The monarchs certainly love it.

There are a couple of varieties: one has yellow flowers, and the other has yellow and red flowers. The plant originates from the tropical parts of the Americas, extending from tropical Mexico in the north to the tropical north of South America.

Red and Yellow-flowered Asclepias curassavica

Unlike many native milkweed varieties found in the United States which are deciduous (go dormant in the winter), "tropical milkweed" grows and flowers year-round. Because of this I actually had caterpillars right through this past winter here in Southern California, and yes, they made it safely to "butterflydom" since in the winter predators like wasps and praying mantises are dormant. The same thing happens in Florida where tropical milkweed is becoming established/invasive.

Asclepias curassavica seeds

There is a debate going on in “monarch butterfly land” as to the dangers of tropical milkweed becoming popular in the range of the eastern monarch migration. This is the migration followed by monarchs that winter over in northern Mexico and which then migrate north following a route east of the Rockies as far as Canada. It has been observed that because of the availability of tropical milkweed in the migration range that some butterflies are choosing to not migrate back south to Mexico in the fall.

Should we care about that or not? There are a couple of arguments put forward against asclepias curassavica. They are, first, that if monarchs do not migrate to Mexico for the winter, there is greater risk of them being killed by a winter freeze in the southern United States. Second, the parasite Ophryocystis elektroscirrha (OE) that debilitates monarchs can survive through the winter on tropical milkweed. Most milkweed varieties native to the United States die down completely to the ground during the winter which deprives OE of an environment on which to survive the winter.

I’m not sure what your take on this debate is. The first milkweed plants I bought were asclepias curassavica. This past winter I bought seeds for a couple of native California milkweeds and have managed to get a few of them established. Perhaps over time I will eliminate the tropical milkweed, but I certainly acknowledge the impulse within me to keep tropical milkweed in my lineup since that means I will have the joy of seeing caterpillars and butterflies through the winter. I am after all, “The Crazy Monarch Guy”, right? Where I live near the California coast frost is about a 1 in 10 years event so most years it would be fine, right? But shouldn't I be encouraging them to fly back to Pacific Grove or Santa Cruz and the other wintering locations along the central and northern coast of California where they will be safer? As always, we love to play god with nature, something that has brought our planet to a very sorry state. Which reminds me to ask, have you read “The 6^th Extinction” by Elizabeth Kolbert? I'm reading it at the moment. Both fascinating and scary. I thoroughly recommend it to you.

Raising Monarch Caterpillars Indoors

I received a message today from someone asking about the pros and cons of raising monarch caterpillars indoors. Her husband built her a really nice netted enclosure in which to grow milkweed outside, but she feels that despite the netting, predators are still taking her caterpillars.

I raised indoors about 150 - 200 caterpillars to butterflies last year so I can definitely give you the pros and cons. In a nutshell there is one of each:

Pro: More monarch caterpillars will make it through the full life cycle and grace the skies with their beauty and lift our spirits to the heavens.

Con: It's a lot of work and a lot of time! Cleaning your enclosure daily, providing a constant supply of milkweed, and coming up with a solution to the problem of where to let the caterpillars pupate will become a daily obligation and burden for you. Having done it for one season, I've retired from caterpillar farming and this year am leaving it to nature to sort it out. So far it's not been too bad and about 50 butterflies have made it.

The one big factor I know that is behind you even thinking of bringing your caterpillars inside is that left to their own devices outdoors, most of them are going to become food for something. This despite all you will read about how the milk in the milkweed is toxic and distasteful and acts as a natural defence against predators. Perhaps that was true before exotic predators were introduced such as the Asian paper wasp, but these days, it's definitely a war zone out there for our beloved monarch caterpillars. The chief predators from my experience are Asian paper wasps. They are on constant patrol from about late May here in Southern California and will pick up many of your caterpillars, especially in their early instars (growth stages). I have also seen praying mantis eating caterpillars of any size as well as the butterflies - they even know to lie in wait by the flowers for the butterflies to come.

So if this is your first year at attempting to help out with the monarch butterfly population, then I know from my own experience that it is very disappointing to finally get butterflies visiting your yard and laying eggs, only to see none of them reach maturity and "butterflyhood". So go for it if you want, but you must make a commitment of time daily to tend your caterpillar zoo.

Here's how I ran my personal zoo last year.

I purchased this small lidded acrylic aquarium from Amazon. I placed a paper towel on the bottom and then three small vases filled with water and milkweed inside the tank. Daily I changed the paper towel, topped up the milkweed.

Once the caterpillars entered the 5th instar (the final stage of the caterpillar stage before pupating into a chrysalis) I would remove the caterpillars and put them into individual glass jars with a piece of cardboard for a lid. I secured the lids to the jars with a piece of scotch tape. (For any 5th instar caterpillars that I bring in from outside currently I just use a piece of paper towel secured across the top with a rubber band). I would drop a couple of milkweed leaves into the jars while the caterpillar was still eating and growing - maybe 2 or 3 days. I would shake out the friss (that's caterpillar poop to most people) before dropping fresh leaves into the jars.

Once the caterpillars were ready to pupate, they would climb to the top of the jar and pupate hanging from the cardboard lid. At some point before the butterfly emerged (10 to 14 days), I would hang the lid inside one of these picnic food tents I also got from Amazon where they would eclose (hatch/emerge) and I would release them at the end of the day when I got home from work.

Here are a couple of things I learned later that would have saved me some time, well actually, a lot of time. First, you don't need to make air holes in the cardboard lids; I spent hours punching four holes in each lid! The caterpillars are never going to use up all the oxygen in the jar, nor is the makeshift lid likely to be airtight. Second, I spent a lot of time stringing up the lids in the food tent. Now if ever I am going to move a chrysalis I detach it and hang it from string. Here's a basic rundown on how to do that:

Tie a piece of 0.5mm nylon cord (something like this at Amazon) around the stem of the chrysalis using a non-slip knot (I use a "reef knot" that I remember from my days as a boy scout - left over right and under, right over left and under). Once you have secured the knot around the black stem gently pull down dislodging the fine cobwebby mesh that the caterpillar makes to hang his black stem from. Then I just tie the chrysalis to a twig in a tree out of the sun - chrysalises do not do well in full sun.

So that's my brief rundown on my method of raising monarch caterpillars indoors. Let me know in the comments if you have any questions and I'll try and answer them if I can. Perhaps you have your own technique or ideas you would like to share too. Please do. As they say, there's more than one way to skin a "cat".

Happy monarch caterpillar farming!

Monarch Butterfly Research Tagging Projects

Tagged Monarch Butterfly Cal Poly Monarch Alert Project

This tagged monarch butterfly showed up in my garden last year. It had traveled 18 miles / 29km from its place of release.

There are several research programs devoted to the monarch butterfly, and if you are crazy for monarchs then you might like to become a tagger too to help out with this research.

Don't panic, you don't have to tag every butterfly that emerges to take part; just tag the ones you can.

 When I reported this butterfly I got an email from Jean, the woman who had tagged and released it. She is an avidly crazy-for-monarchs person like me who gardens for butterflies in Rancho Santa Margarita here in Orange County, California. I went over and visited her and her garden and helped her tag some butterflies. It was great to know that us crazy-for-monarch people are not alone in this world.

 Here are two links if you wish to get involved in tagging monarch butterflies that emerge from your butterfly garden.

East Coast population: http://www.monarchwatch.org/tagmig/tag.htm 
West Coast population: http://monarchalert.calpoly.edu/

Have a crazy day!

Monarch Butterfly Scientific Terminology

Rise up, Citizen Scientists! Prove how crazy for monarch butterflies you are by committing to memory some of the scientific terminology relating to the monarch butterfly. Be the nerd that all your friends pick first to be on their team when you play Trivial Pursuit, Monarch Genius version!

• Danaus plexippus - the scientific Latin name for the monarch butterfly
• larva - that's the Trivial Pursuit name for a caterpillar 
• pupa - what the caterpillar transforms into and is between being a caterpillar and a butterfly
• chrysalis - the blue-green jewel-like case that contains the pupa (this is called a cocoon in the case of moths)
• instar - a stage in the life cycle of the monarch caterpillar on its way to becoming a butterfly. A monarch caterpillar goes through 5 instars. The end of each instar is marked by the caterpillar shedding its skin (molting) 
• eclosion - refers to both the hatching of the larva from its egg and the butterfly from its chrysalis
• androconium - the black spot in the center of each hind wing of the male monarch butterfly

That's enough for now. My head hurts!



The two spots on the hind wings near the tip of
the abdomen are known as the androconium
and indicate this is a male
© John Corney

A recently "eclosed" monarch butterfly
(c) John Corney

A monarch butterfly chrysalis
(c) John Corney

Pupating monarch caterpillar and chrysalis
(c) John Corney



The Life Cycle of the Monarch Butterfly - Video

Here's a great video of the complete life cycle of the monarch butterfly produced for the Chicago Nature Museum. If you've never had the chance to see the monarch's incredible transformation (metamorphosis) from egg, through caterpillar, pupa (chrysalis), to butterfly, then this is a great way to place yourself in awe of what is going on out there in the big wide world of Mother Nature.

Watching the video is one thing, but that "big wide world of Mother Nature" that I mentioned could be your own backyard too if you live in an area where monarch butterflies are found? It's quite easy, and then you can have your own nature show playing in your own back yard and quickly learn how easy it is to become crazy for monarchs! It will fascinate you, your kids if you have any, your visitors.

So why not go here for my guidelines on how to attract monarchs to your garden.

Monarch caterpillar and butterfly predators

Monarch caterpillar and butterfly predators

If you do even a small amount of reading about monarchs you will soon come across a statement that says predators leave monarch caterpillars alone because the milk (latex) in the sap of the milkweed plant is toxic and distasteful to predators. Don't you believe it! I have witnessed young caterpillars being carried off by wasps and swallowed whole by praying mantis right before my eyes!

From my experience, Asian paper wasps and praying mantis are both very happy to make a meal of monarch caterpillars. Lady bugs also will possibly eat the eggs.

Last summer (2013) the wasps were so efficient at picking off the young larvae that I resorted to bringing the caterpillars inside and becoming a caterpillar farmer and raising them in an aquarium. Believe me it was lots of work keeping them well fed and the aquarium clean. (By the way, there was of course no water in the aquarium - it just made the perfect lidded enclosure from which they couldn't escape).

Praying mantis also are clever enough to lie in wait right at the flowers on milkweed plants to snatch up the butterflies as they come to feed on the flowers. If you ever see 4 monarch butterfly wings on the ground with no body attached, you can be sure the butterfly was taken by a mantis. Once they grab the butterfly the first thing they do is bite off each of the 4 wings before consuming the body! A story line for a horror movie for sure!

What can you do about wasps and praying mantis? Not a lot really as you can't start spraying them with pesticides as this will also kill the caterpillars and butterflies. When I see big praying mantis lying in wait by the flowers I pick them off the plant and take them to another part of the property that is far away from the milkweed. I guess it makes me feel better, but who knows if it's very effective. If I see wasps building a nest on the house, I remove it immediately, although they obviously do not respect boundaries and will make a "bee line" for your yard from your neighbor's once they find the bountiful booty on your plants.

So other than those small steps you can just decide to accept it all as being how things work out there in the wilds of your backyard, or you can become a caterpillar farmer like I did last year. Your choice, but after one year of raising monarch caterpillars inside I have decided to retire and let nature take its course.

So far this year I have had around 100 caterpillars reach maturity and progress through to butterflies. So it's been way better than last year, but last year I didn't get my first eggs till about this time and the wasps are only just getting established again, and the praying mantises that I have seen are tiny at this stage. So predation season is not quite here yet. But think of it this way, without some predation, you will never have enough milkweed to support all the eggs that will be laid anyway.

Here's a video of life in my garden on a recent day, including an Asian paper wasp patrolling a milkweed plant.

How to attract monarch butterflies to your garden

Monarch nectaring on Calliandra Californica
(Red Fairy Duster)

Here are some guidelines on how to establish a successful "monarch butterfly garden". All gained from my own experience here in Southern California.

1. Become pesticide free
   Spraying pesticides for insects in your garden will harm or kill monarch butterflies in all their stages: butterflies, eggs, insects, and chrysalises. Not only that, pollinators of all kinds are harmed by pesticides, including bees and other butterflies. We all need to change our attitudes about having completely pest-free gardens. And I found that once I stopped using pesticides several years ago, I slowly but surely ended up with more birds, ladybugs, and mantises in my garden which naturally contained the number of “pests” in my garden. Song sparrows and vireos do morning rounds of many of the plants in my garden looking for “pests” such as other caterpillars! Consider them Mother Nature’s bug-killers.
2. Grow milkweed
   Monarchs will lay their eggs on milkweed of all varieties, but on nothing else. And monarch caterpillars will eat nothing else. There are well over 100 varieties of milkweed native to the United States alone, and many more from around the world. (Go to http://plants.usda.gov
    and search on the scientific name for milkweed which is “asclepias” to see). Try and grow milkweed that is native to your state and locale. You may have to do so by finding a source for seed as I know from experience in Southern California that native varieties of milkweed plants are not typically sold at local nurseries. The hot favorite is “Neotropical milkweed” (Asclepias curassavica) which is native to Mexico and Central America.
3. Plant nectar plants
   Monarch butterflies will feed off the nectar of milkweed plants, but they also feed from many other nectar plants. Nectar plants attractive to monarch butterflies will attract them to your yard even if you don't have milkweed plants. Yes, even butterflies have to eat! You should plant a variety of nectar plants to attract them. Two plants that I have found particularly attractive to monarch butterflies (as well as to bees and hummingbirds) are “Mexican sunflower” (Tithonia rotundifolia) and “tall verbena” (Verbena bonariensis).
4. Sunshine
   Most milkweed and nectar plants do best with a minimum of 6 hours per day of direct sun, and not only that, monarch butterflies thrive on sunshine.  So don't plan on establishing your butterfly garden on the north side of your house or a wall. I actually had to cut back and remove some trees in my garden to get enough shade into my yard.
5. Sit back and enjoy

Welcome

Monarch butterfly on
Mexican sunflower

Welcome to the Crazy Monarch Guy blog.

I'm glad to know there are some other "monarch butterfly" crazies out there! People who obsess about milkweed plants, caterpillars (yes, caterpillars!), gorgeous sparkling jade gems called "chrysalises", and of course, the stunningly beautiful monarch butterfly.

Here I plan to share with you all I have learned about gardening in a way that will attract monarch butterflies to your yard, and how to provide an environment that will help these incredible insects grow from pinhead-sized eggs to gorgeous works of art that fill the sky and lift your spirits.

Help make the world a more uplifting place to live by joining me in becoming crazy about monarch butterflies.