burry, That bed was one made sort of "lasagna style" over turf grass just to have someplace to put wintersown stuff. I needed a bed quick and I took some shortcuts due to lack of materials. I edged the bed with a shovel then loosened the soil deeply a bit by rocking a big fork in it. I laid down newspaper, then leaves, a bag of coffee grounds from Starbucks, topped it with a couple of inches of my own old compost, and planted later that week. Then I weeded, weeded, and weeded some more. Apparently my newspaper was not thick enough and my compost was loaded with weed seeds! Lesson learned. I'm so glad there are so many other insect watchers on here. I know a lot of gardeners are more interested in killing bugs than attracting them. I figure there are no truly bad bugs and so I try to only kill in self-defense :)

I was raising some Red Admirals this year, and had the same experience, with heavy parasitization. Some of the cats died early; others pupated, and the parasitic larvae dropped out of the side of the chrysalis and fell to the floor of the container, where they crawled around for a while - and then underwent their own pupation. So... I kept the pupae of the parasite. And about a week later I was totally gobsmacked to see what emerged -- a common housefly (Musca domestica). I had been hoping for an exotic wasp like an Ichneumon, but it was a plain old ordinary housefly. After I get better organized I'll write up some of this for a separate post with some photos.

I just looked it up to verify. I have a CD-ROM of "The Butterflies of North America, A Natural History and Field Guide", by Dr. James Scott: "Erynnis baptisiae (Indigo Dusky Wing) Like E. lucilius (658) in wing pattern and male valvae shape. E. baptisiae flies with lucilius only from s Minn. to Penn.-Mass. E. baptisiae is a little larger than lucilius (fw length usually 16-18 mm) and has a paler upf patch just inside the white dots (like that of E. zarucco, 656). E. baptisiae is usually smaller than zarucco, and its fw is wider. Habitat Gulf Coast to Transition Zone open woods and brush. Hostplants herb and shrub Leguminosae: Baptisia tinctoria, leucantha, australis, leucophaea var. laevicaulis, Crotalaria sagittalis, Lupinus perennis, Thermopsis villosa, Astragalus canadensis, introduced Coronilla varia, "hop clover." Lab larvae were raised on Thermopsis mollis and on Aquilegia (Ranunculaceae), the host of E. lucilius. Eggs laid singly on the host. Full-grown larvae hibernate. Mostly two flights, L Apr.-E June and July-Aug. (sometimes E Sep.). Males perch all day on low shrubs in open areas to await females." The larvae hiberate on the plant. Leave your Baptisia and other host plants standing until late spring. Pearl Crescents also hibernate on the plant.

Susan, It sounds like you might have had the same trouble as me when you were raising them, with their disappearing. I don't know if they're cannibalistic or not but I have noticed how they stray off of their plant food and seem to wander around like they're looking for something and maybe never find their way back to the host plant, thus starving. I don't know if that's the case or not but I know that some/a lot seem to have a knack for crawling off of the rue and never finding their way back on. In the past I even put them back on, but I think that they managed to crawl back off again. It was so frustrating! Then last year for some reason I had lots of luck raising them and I thought that between leaving them alone (not attempting to put any back on the rue cutting) and raising them in a container on the back porch (rather than bringing them in the house) was the secret to raising them successfully. I guess not. I did everything the same as I did last year and am back to having only a fraction of the GSTs live. I am having the same problem as you with so many predators this year. I'm guessing that it's because it's so dry. I even saw tachinid flies just sitting on the milkweed waiting to find a cat to lay their eggs in. If I could have killed them, I would have. I always smash any fly pupae that show up in my containers (of course, a caterpillar with a string or pupa with a string is always a telltale sign that I'll find at least one fly pupa on or under the paper towel that I have in the bottom of the container. Sorry to hear about all of your RA cats being parasitized. A lot of my RA cats were parasitized too that I brought in. I thought the poor things don't stand much of a chance, the darn wasps get to them before they even have a chance to grow much at all! I feel especially bad for the Monarchs here because it's pretty difficult for me to collect the eggs and cats from the milkweed these days, so I imagine that mostly all of them are being parasitized and eaten by predators. I just do what I can do. I just hope that my garden won't eventually all get turned back into lawn, but I did plant grass in some of it to downsize somewhat. Lila, Sorry to hear about your Queen cats. That would be discouraging, but it's also ENcouraging that you have so many adults out in your garden. So something must be going well. I usually try to bring in eggs if possible of whatever species I'm raising, but if I miss them as eggs, then I try to bring them in as tiny cats. I always bring the GSTs in as eggs because I only ever see the GST mamas lay on the flower heads/seed heads and so they're relatively easy to find compared to if I'd have to go combing through the entire plants (and I have 15 altogether) for cats. Also, I'm allergic to the rue so the less I come into contact with it the better. It does make me wonder, though, if I'd end up releasing more GST cats if I'd wait awhile and collect the cats like you do. I don't know if I mentioned it but I have 8 GST cats on small potted wafer ash trees that I have left on the plants and not brought them in. I've watched them from the time that they were eggs and they all hatched and are doing fine, as opposed to my far worse success rate of bringing eggs in on the rue and raising the cats inside. The cats on the potted trees pretty soon won't have any more leaves to eat and at that point I'll bring them inside and raise in containers. I just hope that they will readily switch over to the rue. It's been hot and dry here too and the dill is all gone. I still have some fennel though and of course the rue, so if any BSTs ever do decide to show up this year, they'll have enough to eat (my parsley has seen its better days but doesn't look as bad as the dill). Yes, if the GST cats eat the eggs and each other, maybe that's what happened, I just don't know for sure. I guess I have to look at it like you said, that at least the ones I end up with are still probably a lot more than if they were outside. I'll continue to bring them in (only I think this mama I've had hanging around here is done laying eggs because I haven't found any lately) and hope for the best. Thanks to both of you for your insight. Cathy