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!"