Monarch Summary 2024
The butterfly season here in suburban Davenport, IA had arocky start. I only found a handful of eggs and had limited success withraising adults. I released two adults in mid-July.
A long dry spell of seeing no Monarchs at all followed. Nofertile females from May through most of July. Then in late July there was onefemale who gifted my small island of milkweed, garden and potted milkweed plants,with 31 eggs. I marked the precious leaves by clipping the tips. The next day Igathered 29 eggs. The missing eggs disappeared overnight. Of those 29 survivingeggs, I got 27 hatchlings.
Last year I found using floral tubes was the best way to handlelarge numbers of small caterpillars all at once. Worked for me this year aswell.
Along with a shortage of Monarch eggs, I had to deal with ashortage of milkweed leaves. It was difficult, but I managed with a few donatedplants and discovered that frozen milkweed leaves can be used when there aremany hungry mouths to feed late-stage caterpillars. I was able to release 18adults Aug 24-25.
Because of travel plans I asked a friend and fellow Monarchfoster mom to tend to the last 9 chrysalises. They all made it. I then found 3small late caterpillars and my friend took those in to feed and care for aswell. They were all released by Sept 20th. So, this year's total for me was 32adults. That number pales compared to the 85 adults I released in 2023.
