Cghpnd, I'm so sorry you're having bad luck. Did they seem OK when you found them? Are there more cats still living? If so, make sure you separate the eggs from them. You probably want to have multiple containers that you can move the cats and eggs to as they grow, and clean the alternate containers with bleach each time you switch them out. There are nasty diseases that Monarchs can carry and pass on to one another. Some people who raise Monarchs insist that each cat should be kept in an individual container. It certainly makes sense to keep small groups separate, so if one container is infected, at least the other groups have a chance to avoid infection. And wash hands and milkweed carefully. Again, some people soak their milkweed in a weak bleach solution and then rinse it thoroughly before giving it to their cats, in case sick cats have crawled over the leaves before they collected them. Sorry to be a bit of a wet blanket, but there is obviously something seriously wrong, and I want the rest of your experience to be positive. Martha

BE#3 is a great-flavored snap bean. It's just not terribly productive in that stage, and there are many snap varieties which are better suited. After my crop failure in 2010, I am growing BE#3 again this year, in quantity... three 24-foot rows. Like all of my beans this year, they suffered from early stunting. After being planted on time, they germinated well, then just sat there for almost all of June. Still haven't positively identified the cause, but it affected many of my beans. Fortunately, BE#3 is fully recovered, has been growing vigorously, and now has a lot of pods in snap stage. It could be a stretch to get dry seed before frost, but I am hopeful. I want to return my seed stock to a level where I can again share it freely. By the way, my first planting this year was with seed saved from 2005, the year I first grew it. It was 'preferred' seed, the largest & healthiest that I separated out for that year. Age had taken its toll, only about 25% of that seed germinated. I culled out the seed saved from 2010 (about 75% was bad) and replanted with the good seed in the dead spots; those germinated almost 100%.

Congrats, and break out the candy cigars! Sometimes they remove unhatched eggs, sometimes not. I like to wait at least 3 extra days to see if it will hatch, but after that, a nestling would be so far behind the others, it would not likely be able to compete and would not survive anyway. You don't have to remove unhatched eggs, but usually I do. They are SO fragile, though, it must be done very carefully. You don't want to crush it and soil the nest, which would surely attract ants and other problems. You can use a spoon; I have a nice plastic one that came with MiracleGro that has 2 ends, one end is very deep and holds the egg nicely so it won't roll out. BlueBars

Welcome! First, nestboxes should never be mounted on fences, wooden posts, trees or anything else a predator can easily climb up. They should be mounted on slick metal poles (conduit) with predator baffles (wobbling stovepipe) and put up at least 15 feet away from any fence/tree or anything a predator can jump from. Your raccoon you relocated could be back anytime and or another raccoon could come by and see its happy meal sitting waiting on the fence for it. Please visit sialis.org for helpful information on properly mounting nestboxes and info on sparrow spookers/wren guards etc. If you see birds sitting with the Blues and not being chased away they are not wrens or HOSP. They are most likey House Finches which like to hang with Blues for some reason. However being you are on a farm with other farms around you probably most likely have HOSP around. A sparrow spooker will not scare the Blues away from their nesting and I would put one up asap, right after you move that box off that fence and to a safer spot about 15 feet away from the fence. Yes you can move an active nesting like this, the Blues won't abandon it because of moving it. As far as the TRES you can do the same with that box but you will need to be much more careful if there are eggs. It is really hard to see in their nests because of all the feathers but usually when it is loaded with feathers that means there are eggs in there. I just did a nestbox switch on an active Blues nesting because the momma blue laid seven eggs (which all hatched)in a smaller Gilwood style box, it has a 3 1/2" x 4 1/4" floor. I switched the nest to a larger box mounted on the same pole and had no problems with the adults accepting it. The nestlings were five days old. Good luck! Donna