Ugh, nevermind, I got home from work and it was dead; limp, yellow discharge on the paper towel :(

Awe, so sorry to hear that Tracey! At least you're having some success, but I know it's sad to lose any at all.

I hope you have better luck next year!

Diana

I have lost a lot of Pipevines to Black Death recently. It gets very depressing when you lose a caterpillar. I'm hurting for you and with you.

Sandy

Tracey,

Up until the point where you said it had died, I thought I had one of it's siblings.

I have one which prematurely went into the chrysalis stage. The chrysalis is so tiny compared to the others. If it was mid-summer, I'd see what develops, but it's starting to be late in the season so I will euthanize it later today.

Sorry to hear the little one didn't make it.

It's been a bad few days.
Firstly, I had that monarch die.
I now have a darkened monarch chrysalis that's going on day four, just like the one that my coworker had, which never eclosed :( I'm not giving up just yet, although deep down I know it's bad. No oozing, no odor.
Then this morning, I found my last BST cat at the bottom of the butterfly cage. Also small for what seemed a long time. Also had yellow discharge surrounding him. And he and the monarch had no contact whatsoever.
I was trying to think of how much death I have experienced this year, and how heartbreaking it's been. Naturally I can't help but wonder if it was something I had done wrong, but deep down I know it wasn't, especially since I throw out any container that had a death. Except in the cage of course. Bad year for what started out so good...

Tracey,

I know how you feel - truly! Last year I experienced the same. I had seven cats die in one container. Despite all my efforts to save them after finding out the first was sick, well, it was futile.

This year has been much better though. Out of about 40, only two have died prematurely. We've tripled our releases this year and I can only look forward to next year which I know will also be good for you too! :O)

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 noteâ¦
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! :)