Author: TrendsandTopics

MONARCH NOTES

Mildweed pointers:
Milkweed plants need to be watered daily in the summer sun of Southern California.
If not watered, they will droop in 24 hrs, and die in 48 hrs.

Yellow leaves on the milkweed
I’ll get to the causes in a minute, but more importantly: here is the cure for yellow leaves:
trim the wilkweed back somewhat, and give it some water.
Yellow leaves in the LOWER parts is a sure sign that the milkweed has matured and is deleting itself.
Yellow leaves in the LOWER parts of the milkweed plant is NOT a sign of overwatering.
Yellow leaves in the LOWER parts of the milkweed plant is NOT some kind of plant virus or disease.
Don’t bother removing the yellow leaves from the LOWER parts of the milkweed, they are about to fall off anyway.

Yellow leaves ALL OVER the milkweed can be due to aphids, which are sucking fluid out of the plant.
Yellow leaves ALL OVER the milkweed, along with drooping, are signs that the plant needs water.

Tachnid flies:
When tachnid larva emerge from a dead caterpillar, they will attempt to burrow into the soil or hide under a pot or rock. Once hidden, the tachnid larva will turn into a reddish-brown coffee-bean pupa, from which a tachnid fly will emerge in about five days. Even one tachnid fly could destroy all the caterpillars in your refuge cage.

Don’t give tachnid larva any where to hide in your refuge cage!!
In addition, keep your refuge cage uncluttered so the tachnid larva have nowhere to hide.

Look for tachnid flies on flat white surfaces, at the edge of shadow and light. They seem to be attracted by a sprinkle of water on a white surface.

Caterpillars oftentimes rest on vertical surfaces, like on the sides of the mesh cages.
They are molting, so just leave them alone.
In this phase, they are vulnerable to attack from all sorts of predators, so protect them in a refuge cage.
When you see a caterpillar in a vertical position, take it to your refuge cage

Do a patrol of your milkweeds early in the morning, looking for little caterpillars on the milkweeds. Any caterpillar that is on a milkweed that is out in the open needs to be taken to your refuge cage. If you rescue the caterpillars early in the morning, the tachnid flies will not have had chance to strike them. Tachnids don’t fly at night, and it takes them a while to get started in the morning.

In the wild, when caterpillars are large enough, they crawl down off the milkweed plant and try to make it to the base of a vertical object, like a fence or tree. From there, they crawl up the vertical object, hoping to reach the underside of a ledge or leaf, to which they attempt to attach. Once they have cast their anchoring silk on the underside of the object, they turn into a hanging J, from which they become a chrysalis.

During the large caterpillar’s journey, if it gets on a big, featureless wall, it will just wander up and down. The large caterpillars are not able to maintain their orientation on a blank vertical surface. If you see a large caterpillar on a wall, just take it to the refuge cage. The inside aspect of the top of the refuge cage is a perfect spot for the large caterpillar to turn into a chrysalis.

Refuge cages:
Buy and use cages to protect your caterpillars. The best kind will have a fine mesh screen. Get cages that have a flexible cable framework, which act like the fold-up sunscreens used in front windows of cars. A cage with fine mesh screening and a flexible cable framework will take literally 3 seconds to set up. DON’T rig up a do-it-yourself version of a cage: you will waste a lot of time, lose a lot of caterpillars, and expend much more effort than you needed to.

The best environment for developing Monarchs is this: milkweed plants, in their original pots, placed in fine-mesh-flexible-frame cage. Please just accept this advice, since it is the product of many hours of trial-and-error.

The refuge cage protects the caterpillars from the tachnid flies. Out in the open, the caterpillars have little defense against the tachnids. Once a caterpillar is stung by a tachnid fly, it is doomed.

The refuge cage also protects caterpillars against multiple garden enemies, such as ants, lizards, praying mantii, and birds.

Another benefit of the refuge cage is that it keeps the growing caterpillars in a confined space, so that, if they fall off the milkweed plants, they can easily get back onto the milkweed plants. Out in the open, if a caterpillar falls off a milkweed, it will wander off looking for another milkweed plant to climb onto, but oftentimes the caterpillar will get lost. On the other hand, if a caterpillar falls off a milkweed plant in the refuge cage, the caterpillar can easily climb up the pot and back onto a milkweed plant.

The inside of the top of the refuge cage provides a great spot for the full-grown caterpillars to attach to when they decide to turn into a chrysalis. In the wild, the full-grown caterpillars will leave the milkweed plant and crawl up to 40 feet away, then crawl up onto a structure or plant to find a place to turn into a chrysalis. This journey makes them very vulnerable to attack by multiple adversaries.

Another benefit of the refuge cage is that it protects newly-emerged female Monarchs from overly-aggressive male suitors. The newly-emerged female Monarch needs several hours to deploy her wings. If she is disturbed during this phase, her wings will not fully expand, her wings will remain crinkled, and she will never be able to fly. The casual observer might surmise that the female Monarch butterfly with crinkled wings is a victim of OEM virus, while in fact she is the victim of an overly-aggressive male suitor.

Still another benefit of the refuge cage is that it can be configured to protect developing Monarchs from heat. In Southern California the summer heat can be intense. Developing Monarchs do not tolerate temperatures over 90 degrees Fahrenheit. They become dehydrated, turn dark, and die. The refuge cage can be easily protected from the summer sunlight: get a swath of sunscreen cloth, fashion it into a cap, and place it over the outside of the top of the refuge cage. Use ziplock ties to attach the sunscreen to the outside of the top of the refuge cage.

You will need a vacuum cleaner to vacuum up the caterpillar droppings that accumulate on the bottom of the refuge cage.
NEVER use a vacuum cleaner while you are wet or standing on a wet surface.

If the refuge cage is full of milkweed plants in pots, DON’T drag it to a new location. The dragging causes rips in the undersurface of the cage.

MONARCH ADDON

Dark-skinned caterpillars:
Dark-skinned caterpillars are stressed.
Most often, a dark-skinned caterpillar has tachnid larva growing within it.
Sometimes, a dark-skinned caterpillar is simply dehydrated

Tachnid fly timetable:
Tachnid flies start appearing mid-April
Tachnid flies come out at about 9:30AM
They seem to appear as the morning first warms up
They are less active in the heat of the day.
They reappear in the evening.

Tachnid fly swatting:
If you see a squirming caterpillar,or, one that fell and is squirming:
Beware: there is a tachnid fly in the vicinity.
Try to kill it: wait a few minutes with a fly-swatter handy.

Tachnid fly appearance:
red eyes
hairy
a little smaller than a housefly
slower than a housefly

Cover some of your milkweeds when Monarch females are laying eggs:
If you don’t, the caterpillar population will suddenly explode, caterpillars will eat all your milkweeds, and some will starve.

Monarchs don’t tolerate heat over 90F.
Use sunscreen cloth to fashion a cover over your mesh cages

Shopping for milkweed:
If there are no monarchs flying around and no caterpillars crawling on the leaves,
don’t buy the milkweed, no matter how good it looks.

If you need to pick up a butterfly:
Put your index finger lengthwise in its path, NOT across its path.
The Monarch will crawl onto your nail and then onto your finger.
You can cup your other hand behind the Monarch to protect the wings.

Aphids:
Rinsing them off your milkweed with some solution or the other is an exercise in futility.
Partially control aphids by regularly trimming back your milkweeds, but this method is time-consuming.
You must quarantine any new milkweeds before introducing them to your sanctuary.

TACHNID FLIES
Spraying tachnid flies with a salt solution did not kill them.

Tachnid flies are attracted by the SIGHT of caterpillars. To demonstrate this fact, put a large caterpillar in a clear container: a tachnid will soon present itself for swatting.

MOLTING
You fill find caterpillars resting on vertical surfaces. They’re molting. Leave them alone. Caterpillars need to shed their skin multiple times during their development, and they need a firm, vertical surface as they do that.

MILKWEED
Keep milkweed well-watered. Basically, water the milkweed whenever the soil appears slightly dry.

REFUGE CAGES
The refuge cages should be set upright, so the door is easily accessible.

The refuge cages should be weighted down with paving stones, otherwise, the refuge cages will be blown over by the wind.

Be careful: if you try to drag the refuge cage somewhere, the paying stone will tear a hole in the bottom of the cage. Take the paving stone out of the refuge cage before you try to move it somewhere.

GROW CAGES
QUARANTINE CAGES
REGROW CAGES
These cages will not need to be accessed very often. So, these cages can be set flat, which will maximize available space.

Set these cages flat, with the door facing downward to the ground.

Roll up the door flap with a 4-foot iron pipe, about 1-inch in diameter. This keeps the cage from blowing away.

NEWLY-PURCHASED MILKWEED PLANTS
Leave the milkweeds in the pots you bought them in. There is no need to put them in the ground.
Transplanting newly-purchased milkweeds will send them into transplant shock.

Place newly-purchased milkweed and their pots in a separate quarantine cage.
This is because tachnids may be in the soil, ready to emerge and kill your caterpillars.
Best to wait at least a week before moving the milkweed plants to any other part of your sanctuary.

Test any newly-purchased milkweed for insecticides. Inexpensive kits to test for insecticides can be purchased online. People use these kits to test for insecticides on the fruits and vegetables that they purchase at the store.

Another reason to quarantine newly-purchased milkweed: aphids. Even if you inspect the milkweed carefully at the nursery, you may fail to see yellow aphids. After the milkweed has been in quarantine for a week, any aphids will have multiplied to the extent that they are plainly visible.

RECYCLING MILKWEEDS
Milkweed will regrow, even after caterpillars have eaten most of the leaves. To recycle the milkweed plants, you must first remove all the remaining leaves. That way, you can be sure there are no lurking aphids. Then, leave the milkweeds out in the open for one week. That way, you can be sure that there are absolutely no aphids on the plants. Then, put the milkweeds in the regrow cage.

CATERPILLAR HABITS
Caterpillars tend to rest under leaves, out of view of aerial predators. They will position along the spine of the milkweed leaf.

When a caterpillar decides to become a chrysalis, it will seek an overhead surface to attach to. A caterpillar that decides to become a chrysalis under a leaf will always attach to the spine of the leaf, which is the most stable part of the leaf if the leaf should dry up and shrivel.

MILKWEED MAINTENANCE
Water the milkweeds directly thru the netting of the cages. Open the cages as infrequently as possible: a tachnid takes only a second to fly in and kill a caterpillar.

Don’t use fertilizer on the milkweeds – fertilizer will attract ants, which stress the caterpillars.

AT THE MILKWEED NURSERY
Are there monarchs flying around the milkweed? If not, don’t buy your milkweed there.

Check the milkweed leaves for small yellow aphids. Even a few is too many … they multiply rapidly.

NEW MONARCHS THAT JUST EMERGED FROM THE CHRYSALIS
A monarch that has just emerged from its chrysalis must hang upside down as soon as possible.

Hanging upside down allows the new monarch’s wings to expand.

If a newly-emerged monarchs does not immediately get into an upside down position, its wings will never expand.

If a newly-emerged monarch falls off the chrysalis, try to place it back on the chrysalis. Failing that, place the monarch onto a milkweed leaf so it can maneuver into an upside down position.

A newly-emerged monarch does not need food. It needs to get immediately into an upside down position so its wings can expand.

APHIDS
Aphids will suck water out of the milkweed plants and devitalize them.

Aphids seem to irritate the monarch caterpillars.

Obviously, you can’t use insecticide on the aphids, or you will be killing the monarch caterpillars.

There is no way to get rid of aphids once they are on your milkweeds.
You can’t rinse them off. You can’t pick them off.

HOW TO REHANG A CHRYSALIS
If a chrysalis falls from its attachments the butterfly will not emerge, UNLESS, the chrysalis is rehung.

Step One:
Use dental floss to rehang the chrysalis.
Thread is too thin and will damage the chrysalis.
Fishing line is too thin and will damage the chrysalis.
Make two loose knots in the dental floss as illustrated.
Tighten the upper knot.

Step Two:
Carefully tighten the lower knot around the stem of the chrysalis.
The stem is only a fraction of an inch long, so tighten the knot SLOWLY.
An assistant can gently hold the chrysalis in position while you tighten the knot.

Step Three:
Use the upper two strings to tie a knot around a branch or stem.
We call our rehung chrysalis area the Hanging Garden of Second Chances.