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 5th 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.
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 5th 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 5th 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 5th 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.
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