Date: 10/09/2009

Number: 1

I collected 32 eggs in the span of 1 1/2 weeks during the end of July-beginning of August. By mid-August, I was rearing all the caterpillars to maturity. I kept finding eggs in my garden until the last week of August. I still found eggs at the school garden during the last week of August, but after Sept 1st I did not find any eggs. All 13 Maplewood butterflies, collected the last 2 weeks of August, were migrators. I tagged 4 of them and released them 10-10-09, they were 2-3 days old, 2 females, 2 males. I found the monarch eggs most readily on isolated plants of common milkweed, not necessarily the healthiest in the garden, with larger 10ftX10ft stands about 15-20 ft away. There were LOTS of aphids and thus ladybugs, daddy long legs, and ants this year. I only found 2 larvae, it was hugely successful to collect eggs--my first year doing so. I washed the milkweed immediately after collecting, and washed all milkweed that I gave the caterpilars in cold water. No OE suspected in any of my reared caterpillars, only 1 failure in 84. Awesome! Two years ago was worst year (2007)--I was not collecting eggs, only found 1 larva on swamp milkweed in backyard all summer. The year before that (2006), I found over 20 larvae on my swamp milkweed in the front yard, lost count--at 1 time, the mother plant had ten larvae on it, and 3 chrysalids on the adjacent butterfly bush.

sylvania, OH

Latitude: 41.7 Longitude: -83.7

Observed by: candy
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