Date: 08/14/2011

Number: 1

Today, Sunday Aug.14, 2011, Jerry brought into our house at 810 West 5th St., Duluth, MN at least 14 large monarch caterpillars. The monarch butterflies are still coming through and laying eggs. Jerry noticed yesterday that wasps were catching the caterpillars, killing them, rolling them into balls, and flying off with them. Jerry thought at first that the wasps were only taking the small caterpillars. However, this morning he noticed they were taking the larger ones. So he is building a mesh shelter to place over some of the milkweed, will return the caterpillars to the shelter, and will be transferring other caterpillars to the mesh shelter. He will move the shelter from time to time to keep a fresh supply of milkweed. The wasps were also taking the cabbage moth caterpillars from the garden so we were happy about that. Nature is so great. We also noticed that a tiny black fly will lay eggs on the monarch caterpillars after the caterpillar attaches itself to a leaf to form the chrysallis. The mesh shelter should help with that problem, also.

Duluth, MN

Latitude: 47.1 Longitude: -91.9

Observed by: Catherine
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