Monarch Butterflies 2019 : Part 4

The wasps are out in force, decimating caterpillars or newly hatched butterflies. They are aggressive, voracious and exotic in origin. A far as these imports go, the only good ones are dead ones. It means we have to have a nursery system otherwise none would survive. We also have to be aware of praying mantis' and earwigs, which seem to be killing the caterpillars.

Below are two ways to care for the chrysalis'. We are trying different things to see what works best. Both of these are good but with the lower one, the frame sits on a container so we need to keep an eye to get them out to spread their wings.

We have now released 134 butterflies for the spring (southern hemisphere) as of 31/12/2019. For the full calendar year it's 217 in total.