Love this info. A co-worker of mine who is an avid outdoorsmen, brought in several last year in mason jars that we can watched transform from caterpillar, to the final beautiful monarch. Which we released at work. When my children were younger, we took them to Paul Smith College in the Saranacs, NY to there nature preserve. They had a butterfly house there. They told us that we had arrived at the right moment, the monarchs were just about to hatch. We stood in awe, as the opend the cocoon, unfolded their wings, pumped them up and tried them out. I have been hooked ever since. I have a dozen or so in my back yard every evening. I wintersowed butterfly weed this past winter, transplanted in my garden and found 6 cats out there had munched the poor plant to nothing. We brought 2 in the house, my 19 year old daughter wanted to raise one to release it and one for my outdoorsmen co-worker. He has to forest around in fields for hours trying to find his. He could not believe that we had so many in out back yard. I had an extra butterfly weed plant that I brought to him for his back yard. He was so excited, and still is having a hard time grasping that they eat butterfly weed. He is of the school that they only can be found on the old fashioned milkweed. Everybody at work will walk by and check on the jar, and stop what they are doing to wander outside to watch in amazement when it finds its wings and flies away. Everyone should experience this with their children

The best temperature for monarch development is around 80 degrees F. I hand-rear monarch cats using one quart mason jars, with a piece of fiberglass screen on the top, held down with a rubber band. When the weather gets cool, I will move the jar to a warm spot on the kitchen window, where it will catch the morning sunlight. They will take 10 to 14 days to emerge. The chrysalis you describe above is very likely infected with some pathogen. If you think it might be alive, and unable to emerge, you could put the chrysalis in the freezer for an hour, to stop the suffering.

Susan, What I was suggesting is that if the sun angle and photo period was low enough to dictate going south to overwinter, sexual maturity could be delayed. Confusing maybe because not all individuals that start south go all the way to the overwintering grounds, nor do they all delay sexual maturity. But by default that suggests that the farther south the higher the percentage seen would have delayed maturity. Perception of terms varies widely, but... imaginis refers to likeness or appearance in Latin, as in like the adult stage, with no reference to sexual maturity at all. Since sexual maturity is only realized in the adult (imago, imagines) stage in lepidoptera, some folks might assume those terms mean sexual maturity, but that is not what imago refers to in Latin. I base my perception on the root of a term first, and past experience with what those with far greater knowledge than me commonly infers when using them. Which brings up... what I perceive is from long experience and use, but may not be current as I no longer keep up with changes proven out with new research and studies. So while I have a solid base, I can certainly still be wrong. Add that I try to keep my posts a short as possible (honest), so also do not fully relate everything that could be said, and maybe also assume some things are common enough knowledge that they do not have to be said again. It's always much harder to fully covey with the written word than in conversation. A lot of the information is new to most of the readers here, making it even more challenging to post enough while at the same time not so much that it may confuse them. Sandy, So you're saying do they choose cake or sex? With us it depends on the cake and the companion. and how long its been since we had either. With them it's written in their genes, so they don't really have a choice to make. ;) Back when I ran in the lep circles I often heard of Monarch's that were caught and released while migrating both north and south that were wearing wing tags. Some were reported to a species watch program, some were not. But at least some data gets recorded that would show a small part of where some individuals have traveled and when. But trackable devices... even with the huge inroads made in electronics I seriously doubt any satellite trackable device has been developed that a Monarch could carry. Even if they have or if on the "to do" list of some electronic engineer lepidopterist, the costs involved would be far to prohibitive to be feasable anyway. So I wouldn't look for it any time soon, if at all. Larry

I have had similar experiences this year. I had found and collected over 125 eggs from the Milkweed at school and then, oh I don't recall, but a few dozen eggs from home. I diligently cleaned and fed those larvae but despite the care, I had a HUGE proportion of them die from what appears bacterial infections. I do believe our strange weather (super hot) was also part of the problem. Hubby wondered if it was just 'bad eggs' and I said it could have been that as well and I thought that I may have had a sick mama that was ovipositing, too. I figured that the eggs that were 'bad' probably came from school since the ones that made it were about the number I had collected from home (I am careful about what I release at home so chances are good that the eggs were from a mama I had released myself after having been 'checked'). It just made more sense from a statistical standpoint. On a different note⦠I conducted an experiment of sorts just this week with two larvae (one 3rd instar and one 4th instar) just to see what would happen if I withheld food. I know they should pupate early, right? Well, these two just would NOT pupate! I didn't feed them for five days. I kept thinking, "When are you two going to pupate?" They didn't. So, on day six, I put some fresh food in there. I then observed both for literally TEN minutes. All they did was climb all over the Milkweed leaves and up and down the container. There was a bit of latex on the side of the cup which it appeared they'd 'taste' then move on. It was quite interesting! I thought that perhaps having been without food that maybe they just wouldn't eat at all...I mean, ten minutes was a long time to just wander around! Then, the 4th instar took a nibble at the tip of one leaf and just kept on going. A few minutes later, the 3rd instar started nibble the stem of a leaf. Neither munched a lot but ate a total of eight leaves over the course of 24 hours. I'm still watching to see what they do! :)