Another season of raising Monarch butterflies has come and gone. This will be my final summer of raising them inside. New studies have shown that it is doing them more harm than good. I don't know if it is true, but future statistics will prove whether it is or not. I was under the assumption that only 10% of the wild raised Monarch butterflies survived. Weather, pesticides and predators would eliminate a huge number of eggs and caterpillars. I thought that if I raised them inside with fresh food and a clean environment, most would survive. My death rate was nearly zero percent compared to 90% in the wild. I guess there is more to it than that. Anyone can look up the many articles about this. Instead, I will plant a lot more milkweed next summer and provide an outside environment for them. I am a very small operation compared to some who raise hundreds. If in the future new studies prove this is wrong, I will happily raise them inside once again.
I did something new this year. I planted parsley because I read that Black Swallowtail butterflies like dill, parsley and anything from the carrot family. Sure enough, after noticing some Swallowtail butterflies in the area, I kept checking to see if they laid eggs on my parsley plant. I would check them everyday until I noticed them on the plant. I took three swallowtail caterpillars inside to a different habitat from the Monarch's. I fed them parsley everyday. Two of them thrived. The third never grew and eventually died. The two that thrived grew into beautiful large caterpillars. I had read that they pupate into their chrysalis on a stick or that type of thing so I put some sticks into the habitat.
These caterpillars look very similar to Monarch caterpillars. They are yellow, black and white but in a different configuration. This first picture below is a Monarch caterpillar for comparison purposes.
I found these caterpillars on August 6 and 7. They ate parsley pretty much non-stop until August 15. They would stop for a bit to molt into a larger caterpillar until they molted their final time into its chrysalis. The chrysalis looks green or brown. It is usually brown late in the summer and looks like the stick. You can see the silk string connecting it to the stick but otherwise looks like the stick.
When it is about to emerge or eclose the chrysalis turns very dark. They are almost black at the end. As with the Monarch which also turns black, the chrysalis becomes translucent and when the butterfly is showing through, they emerge.
Black Swallowtails are different from Monarchs. The process is somewhat similar, but Black Swallowtail butterflies don't migrate. There are three broods a year. Each one only lives from two to four weeks. This was the August-September brood. The final brood will form their chrysalis and it will sit over winter and emerge in the spring.
Although Black Swallowtail butterflies are not rare, it was a thrill to see this whole process. This first one is a female. Males have more yellow dots and females have more blue.
After I put her outside, she stayed perfectly still for quite sometime. When the day warmed up and she was sufficiently rested, she flew off to enjoy her short life.
