Summer 2021 - Getting Started Again

The butterflies arrive later each year and there are not as many of them. I see noticeable decline since I started raising Monarch Butterflies in 2016. This year, the weather was fickle. The nights were cold, with temperatures in the 50's throughout June. The days became sunnier and warmer in July. Still, I found very few eggs and newborn caterpillars well into July. The hard lessons I learned about the "Black Death" in the Pandemic Year paid off. I made sure that every Milkweed leaf I gave to my caterpillars was soaked in a mild Clorox solution, rinsed well, and I raised them singly or with leaf mates (two eggs on the same leaf). The happy result was 71 successfully released Monarch Butterflies.