I raised some from eggs I found on my Queen AnneÂs lace. I fed them parsley from w*lm*rt when they started to eat a lot. If theyÂre still small and brown/black with a white splash - they wonÂt eat too much. Just put them on a fresh leaf every day. If they look like this one - theyÂll have an appetite.

It has been a banner year for the BSTs for me this year! Not so for the monarchs :-( But I am hopeful they will make a comeback as well. All of my mw's are healthy and bushy, just waiting for hungry cats! I have had about 35 bst's to raise this year, most are already gone or in chrysalis. Sunday had a female trying to lay eggs on a very windy day and she had trouble landing on the stems. Sadly, the eggs she did manage to lay were infertile (empty shells). But I keep finding new cats and don't know how they got there. I look my fennel and dill over very carefully and still manage to miss an egg or two. I have put various stems of their host plants: fennel, rue, dill, parsley, carrot tops and queen anne's lace in the enclosure at the same time and let the cats pick their favorite food and go for it until it is gone and they have to pick another favorite. They seem to adjust to whatever is available just fine. Good luck. Mechelle

Hi Everyone, I'm a scientist working on butterflies, and I'm trying to get ahold of a Zebra Swallowtail for some genetic analysis (I live in New Jersey). This seemed like a good thread to inquire if anyone living in the southern US might be able and willing to collect (or already has) one of these butterflies they might be able to spare? Full disclosure, sadly the specimen would need to be sacrificed for DNA extraction. However, the knowledge we'll gain from this will be invaluable to the scientific community. If you have any thoughts/suggestions/leads on this, please contact me (maardema@gmail.com). Thanks!

I'm not having much luck with the BST's this year. Last year was my first year for them and at the end of summer I had 12 at one time, all did great and turned into beautiful butterflies. So far this year I found 4 1st instar ones. Everything seemed to be doing okay until they were 5th instar. One of them was lying on the bottom of the tank and his head was sort of black in color. He didn't seem to be doing too good, so I euthanized him. Then the 1st one to pupate couldn't seem to pick a good spot and ended up stuck on the bottom of the tank with his "webbing." I tried to carefully help him on to a stick, but something didn't go right when turning to a chrysalis and he was "leaking" something, so that was the end of him as well :( The last 2 are now Chrysalis and all appears well with them. Whew! These guys are giving me a run for the money this year. I hope I get another batch and all goes better with them. Sherry, last year I had one that was a lot darker, but he wasn't eating or doing too much. I finally figured out he was so dark because his old skin was stuck! I gave it a bit of a nudge, and that did the trick for him.