Beautiful photo, Minrose. Welcome to the BF forum. You will find that a lot of us raise Monarch butterflies. We always love to have new people discover us and share their experiences. We love pictures!

Sandy

Thanks for the welcome, I have 1000's of photos that I have taken.

I raise 'em, too! I have several websites I've done because of the Monarchs as well. In fact, today, I found two more larvae in the rain. Shocked the heck out of me. :P

Here is a link that might be useful: Learn about Monarchs

tdogmom, what a nice website you have created, great photos. What kind of camera do you have to have been able to take those awesome catepillar photos?

Welcome Minrose! You're going to feel at home here.
I've only raised Monarchs inside a few times. I don't have enough milkweed but I'm working on that. I have some seeds ready to plant.
What are the flowers in your photo?

Thanks, Minrose. I used a Canon 40D.

christie, I bought so many new perennials this year, specifically for butterflies that I can not remember the name of this one, sorry.

Minrose and Christie,

It looks like agastache, maybe Gold Jubilee. Smells terrific and comes back every year.

Sorry, that's Golden Jubilee, not Gold Jubilee.

Wow minrose, you certainly are raising a lot of Monarchs! You'll find lots of Monarch raisers here, myself included among them. Welcome to the forum! You'll find tons of info and some really nice folks here.~~Angie

I've been raising Monarchs since 1993. It can get a bit overwhelming, but absolutely rewarding. I also raise several species of moths and other butterflies, too.

Have you connected with Monarch Watch? They have a list serve, forum, and blog.

Here is a link that might be useful: Monarch Watch

There are some major monarch raisers in Minnesota. I was just reading on Monarch Watch about a MN woman who raised 456 this year. Then I come here and this MN person raised 617. Wow.

KC

Pretty picture, Minrose! I've raised Monarchs for 2 years so far. Released 52 Monarchs this year. I enjoy it very much, look forward to tending the cats and the eclosing butterflies every morning, and would love to do more. But alas, they seem to arrive later in the summer and so their breeding season is short here. I am envious of the mid-westerners who have Monarchs for a much longer season.

Also released 21 Black Swallowtails this year, 1st year for those, and have 2 chrysalises over-wintering in the garage.

There were some people on the Monarch Watch Forum that raise 700-800 Monarchs.

I got started very late this year, mid-July. The Monarchs didn't show up until then. I usually see them in late April to May. I probably didn't raise more than 300 this year.

Here is a link that might be useful: Monarch Watch Forum

Well, now we know where all the Monarchs spent their summer this year. Minnesota!

Beautiful picture! I haven't had much luck with monarchs. There were some milkweed plants (various types) in our area, in a public place, and I kept watching for any eggs. Finally I saw three eggs. Then some nitwit came & cut down the milkweeds!!! I found out about it right away & miraculously found one of the eggs. It did hatch out, but the little creature died.

We raised a whole bunch of black swallowtails this past summer,which was very exciting and rewarding. We learned a lot.

Thanks for sharing that picture & good luck to you in the future with raising more of the monarchs. I'm glad you are able to do that, as they need as much help as they can get.

Been raising for 3 years now. Much smaller scale though, approximately 200 over 3 years. But also have released many various sulphurs, swallowtails, fritillaries, and for the first time last summer - some queens in my garden. Actually had two Monarchs (1 male, 1 female) eclose in the last two days. Fed them some Gatorade before releasing... They were in chrysalis for at least a month down here in unseasonably cold weather for us. And then while releasing, noticed another cat (maybe 3rd instar) on a milkweed. Nice start to this year already. :-)

Wow, I really appreciate everyone's input on this post, glad to know there are more of us out there. I am hoping to do some Black Swallowtails again, going to plant some Dill besides carrots to attract more.

Hi minrose....Dill was a dud in our mn garden last year. I am trying smokey fennel and rue this year. The funny thing was there WERE BST adults in our garden last year. Hopefully they will like our host plants in 2011!

I grow Dill, Parsley (both curly and flat), Bronze Fennel, and Zizia for the Black Swallowtails. Going to add Ruta graveolens this year! The BST's have laid eggs on the Dill, Fennel, and Parsley. But their preferences seems to vary, they haven't used every one of the host plants in a given year.

Although they haven't laid any eggs on the Zizia aptera, I've used the leaves as a food for the caterpillars, particularly the bigger cats. They were quite amenable to eating the leaves and it came in handy when the other host plants were withering away in the drought last summer.

I will have to check out fennel too, it looks like, thanks.

WOW! Congratulations on raising so many MBs! How do you do it? 2011 will be my third year of butterfly gardening and hand rearing MBs - the good folk here, especially tdogmom, got me started, or should I say addicted. I have to laugh at runmede's comment that it can be overwhelming. It sure can! Getting all that milkweed to feed all those hungry cats, all those charts and statistics....I can't wait to get started this year!

Brindlebutt,
It was very time consuming but so worth it. Had to go looking for fresh milkweed everyday and then I would also find new catepillars or eggs on them so it kept multiplying. I had 2 newspapers do an article on my raising of Monarchs, got lots of positive feedback from everyone. Very encouraged by it all!

Hi Minrose. Sounds like we had the same kind of summer. There were times when I had to drive around looking for milkweed too. It loves to grow on the blind corners of winding roads. And just when I thought I had enough to feed the cats at home, I too would discover I'd brought more home on the milkweed I collected. This year my neighbor and I are hoping to establish some stands of common milkweed as you have done. Do you have any tips about how to succeed with it? It can be challenging to grow, I understand. Do you use seeds, or cuttings? Any special preparation?

brindlebutt,

common milkweed is extremely easy to grow. We've had a large patch for over 25 years that comes back yearly without fail, in frigid Minnesota.

The funny thing is I don't even know how the milkweed got in our yard. It was long before I started butterfly gardening, and I have always loved monarchs so we just left it there.

The soil it grows in is low quality and milkweed also grows up yearly through the adjacent rock pile. I hope I'm not painting a horrific picture of a weed filled garden...it's not, I swear! :)

CMW does seed a lot and you have to stay on top of it because the monarchs will lay eggs on the tiniest plants they can find. always check the leaves when plucking plants from your lawn!

so, it obviously grows easily from seed, I'll let someone else answer about the cuttings.

If you don't have tropical milkweed, highly suggest that too!

The common milkweed blooms early, tropical blooms late and the yard is filled with monarchs from late may-september (zone 4)

Good Luck with your milkweed, Tony