Butterfly Gardening Seminar - May 8, 2021

I actually got started raising butterflies about six years ago. Typically, if it's a good year, I'll raise somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand butterflies—from egg to butterfly.

My mission is to raise and release healthy butterflies, and you'll see how that all fits together as my presentation continues.

So, let me tell you how the program will go. I started out with storyboards when I first began doing this. Later, I had someone help me who was more technologically advanced, and together we created a PowerPoint presentation with videos showing the actual process. Unfortunately, I can’t use the PowerPoint out here, so instead, I’ll go through the storyboards with pictures from my presentation.

After that, we’ll move the boards out of the way, and up here, I have the creatures in all of their stages. I’ll answer any questions you have, and I’ve also brought magnifying glasses so you can see the little ones up close.

This all begins with planting a butterfly garden. I’m going to fast-forward a bit to the part where the butterflies actually find your garden and begin laying eggs. Then we can talk about the different plants and which butterflies prefer what.

Your garden will need two main things: a host plant, which is where the butterfly lays her eggs, and nectar plants, which provide the liquid food for all the butterflies. They're not too fussy, but nature decides how a butterfly knows which plant is right for laying her eggs. I still haven’t figured that part out myself!

So, we’ll start here. I’m not sure if this will make much of a difference, but I’ll point to what I’m talking about as I go. It all begins with the butterfly laying an egg.
I have monarch eggs in my container here, and it takes between one to five days for them to hatch. Why the range? Because I don’t know exactly when the butterfly laid them. But once I bring in an egg, within one to five days, I should have a baby caterpillar.

And I do! I have one right now that's probably about 24 to 48 hours old. You’re definitely going to need a magnifying glass to see it—it’s that tiny.

Butterflies typically lay their eggs on what’s called a host plant. For monarchs, that host plant is specifically milkweed. They won’t lay eggs on anything else. The only other butterfly that does something similar is the queen butterfly—yes, that’s actually the name of the species, not a reference to gender. There are both male and female queens.

Now, as you’ve probably heard, monarch populations in the wild have been declining. Only about 1 to 3 percent of monarchs survive to adulthood. That sounds alarmingly low, but consider this: a single monarch can lay up to 500 eggs. If every one of those survived, we’d have a serious imbalance. Nature has a way of working things out, but unfortunately, we humans tend to interfere and throw things off balance.

When a monarch lays her egg on a host plant, it will hatch in one to five days. And here's something I want you to remember—eggs hatch, not “born.” Using the wrong terms for these stages is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me!

So, once the egg hatches, the very first thing the baby caterpillar does is eat its own eggshell. That eggshell is its first meal—it's made of protein. I've actually watched this process under a microscope. The egg has little ridges on it, and it’s fascinating. It reminded me of watching a sonogram—just like when you're seeing a baby move for the first time.

One night, I was watching a monarch egg under the microscope and saw the tiny caterpillar moving inside. I was up until 1:20 a.m., absolutely mesmerized. Inside, the baby has two tiny claw-like mandibles, sort of reddish in color. It uses these to pull and tear at the ridges inside the egg until it breaks through. Then it starts eating the shell.

By the time it's done, you wouldn’t even know a caterpillar had hatched—that’s by design. Leaving no trace helps protect the newborn from predators. After hatching and eating the shell, the baby caterpillar is exhausted. It rests quietly to build up its strength.

At this point, it's a tiny white caterpillar with a little black head—no stripes yet. I can usually tell when an egg is about to hatch because the top turns black, showing the baby’s head inside. The egg starts out a milky white color and darkens just before hatching.

Once it’s rested, it starts eating the leaf it was laid on—and that’s the beginning of its life cycle.

These little guys are eating and pooping machines. That’s all they do: eat, sleep, and poop—just like a human baby! As they eat, they grow rapidly, and eventually, their skin becomes too tight. At that point, they molt—meaning they shed their skin. They actually do this five times throughout their development. Each stage between molts is called an instar.

So, you’ll hear me refer to them as first instar, second instar, all the way up to the fifth instar. By the time they’re at their fifth instar, they’re getting ready to form their chrysalis.

Important note: It's called a chrysalis, not a cocoon. Moths make cocoons. Butterflies form chrysalises. You’ll sound like an expert if you remember that!

When it’s time to molt, the caterpillar secretes a special enzyme that helps it slide out of its old skin. There's a kind of face mask that covers the front of its head, and it has to wiggle to get that off. I compare it to an elephant using its trunk—watching them wiggle out is adorable.

I even have some of these little face masks saved, but you'll need a magnifying glass to see them.

After molting, the caterpillar rests. It’s an energy-intensive process. Then, it turns around and eats its old skin. Again, this helps hide evidence from predators and provides extra protein.

They repeat this cycle five times, and then they’re ready to form their chrysalis. Before they do this, they usually wander away from their food source. The first time I saw that, I thought I’d done something wrong! But now I understand it's part of their behavior.

They’ll often rest for 24 to 48 hours in a kind of still, almost kneeling position—what we call the “prayer stance.” If you’re lucky and they cooperate, you might catch them in this pose. I actually have a swallowtail in that stance right now.
Alright, so now we’ve got them through all five stages—from the baby hatching out of the egg to forming the chrysalis.

When the butterfly comes out of the chrysalis, usually somewhere between eight to ten days later, that process is called emerging. Just like eggs hatch, butterflies emerge. Hopefully, we can keep those terms straight!

Now, when they form their chrysalis—I've got some examples here—they’re extremely vulnerable. That’s because they’ve just shed their skin for the last time. I even have a picture of that exact moment in the process.

Before making the chrysalis, the caterpillar spins silk using a special gland, creating one fine thread at a time. I’ve got samples of these silks on black paper so you can really see how delicate they are. The caterpillars use the silk for mobility and to hold onto surfaces. They’ve got two sets of legs: the front three are called prolegs, and the back four are like little suction cups that help them grip.

When they’re ready, they’ll crawl to a chosen spot and begin spinning their silk back and forth until it forms a concentrated area called a button. That’s what they’ll attach themselves to. I have examples of these buttons too.

Of course, they don’t perform on demand! I told them I was coming this morning and asked them nicely to demonstrate, but they weren’t very cooperative. So I brought whatever I had already.

Once the button is ready, the caterpillar will rest—it’s exhausting work! Then, it will find that button with its rear end. I once watched a little guy spend 45 minutes trying to locate that button! They use two small claspers at the tip of their abdomen to latch onto the silk button. It’s almost like Velcro.

Once attached, they hang in a “J” shape for about 24 to 48 hours. Then, that J-shape straightens out. Their antennas also start to crimp and pinch. The first time I saw that, I panicked—I thought I’d killed it! But it turns out it’s just preparing to form the chrysalis.

This is where it gets really interesting. Between those front antennae, the skin splits open right down the back. They’ve secreted an enzyme that helps separate the skin from the body, and with lots of wiggling, they pull the skin down and off. That’s when I say they do their “wiggle dance.” They’re trying to shake off what they no longer need.

At the very top of their body, a small black stem pops out—this is called the cremaster. It’s hidden inside until then. The cremaster is what hooks into the silk button, anchoring the entire chrysalis. I have pictures of this too, so I’ll show you.

Once it finds the button, the chrysalis wiggles around the cremaster to settle into place and finally discards the last bit of skin. If that old skin doesn’t fall off on its own, it’s not a problem. I usually just flick it off gently once it’s dry.

Right after forming, the chrysalis is like unset Jello—almost all liquid. If it falls at that stage, it often means the caterpillar was sick, because healthy ones rarely fall. And if they do, they usually go splat! But once it hardens, it forms a strong outer shell. If you drop a hardened chrysalis, there’s a good chance it’ll be totally fine. Nature’s amazing like that.

Everything that becomes the butterfly is already inside that chrysalis. Before it hardens, if you look closely, you can even see parts of the future butterfly inside—the proboscis (their straw-like mouth for drinking nectar), the antennae, and even the eyes. I’ve got pictures that show these early details really clearly.

Now, once the chrysalis hardens, the monarch will stay in there for about eight to ten days, unless the weather is cold—in which case it can take a little longer. That time frame is consistent for most butterflies except the swallowtails.

Swallowtails do their own thing. They enter a state called diapause, which is similar to hibernation. I’ve had a swallowtail chrysalis stay dormant for over five months! Up north, people even store chrysalises in their garages or refrigerators to overwinter them. When spring comes and the temperatures warm up, they’ll emerge.

Again—they emerge, not hatch!

And now let me tell you something beautiful about monarch chrysalises: I call them my little Fabergé eggs. They have these delicate gold dots around the bottom and a thin ring of gold near the top. Even the experts don’t fully know why they have those gold spots. But they are just stunning to look at.
When the butterfly is getting ready to emerge from the chrysalis, the exterior casing becomes transparent. You can actually see the wings, the veins, and all the parts of the butterfly inside. That’s how you know it’s close—though, of course, never as quick as I’m hoping for or when I actually have time to watch!

Eventually, the chrysalis splits open and the butterfly begins to emerge head-first. It uses its legs to push itself out, kind of like a pilot coming out of the top hatch of a jet. That’s honestly what it reminds me of—it looks just like that!

Now, the entire butterfly has been squished inside that tiny chrysalis. So when it first comes out, its abdomen is huge and its wings are tiny. What it has to do next is hang on to the chrysalis and pump fluid from the abdomen into the wings. That’s what causes the wings to expand.

This part takes about 15 to 30 minutes, but the butterfly isn’t done yet. At this point, it's still super delicate—think of trying to pick up wet tissue. That’s what it’s like. So it needs to hang for another 2 to 4 hours to allow the wings to dry and harden. They don’t get rock-hard, but they become firm enough to fly.

If the butterfly falls or its wings get bent before they harden, you can’t fix that. A bent wing is permanent, and depending on how bad it is, the butterfly might never be able to fly. Some people do wing transplants—I haven’t, personally. It’s like wallpapering: you line up a donor wing over the damaged one, cut them both down the middle, and make a perfect match. I’ve done wallpaper, but I’m not quite ready for wing surgery!

Once the butterfly is out, it’s got a couple of important things to do. First: hang on tightly. It uses what are called tarsal claws—I’ve got magnified pictures of them. They look like little prongs with gripping spines. The butterfly uses those claws to hold onto the chrysalis, the net, or whatever surface it's on.

Second: it has to zip its proboscis. The proboscis is that little straw it uses to drink nectar, and it actually comes out in two pieces. It has to roll and unroll it several times to fuse the two halves together. The edges have microscopic teeth—so tiny you need a microscope to see them—and those help the proboscis zip into a single tube.

That proboscis is how the butterfly drinks from flowers. And butterflies are lazy nectar drinkers! They like flowers that are close together so they don’t have to work too hard. That’s why they love pentas, lantana, and other cluster flowers—so they can just shift over a little bit and sip from the next flower head.

Now here’s where things can go wrong. If a butterfly falls, or struggles to emerge, it might be sick. One of the biggest culprits is a nasty parasite called OE—Ophryocystis elektroscirrha. Try saying that three times fast! That’s why we just call it OE.

OE is a microscopic spore, and it’s absolutely devastating. When a female butterfly is infected, she carries these spores on her abdomen—like glitter. And glitter gets everywhere! As she flies around, spores fall onto leaves. If she mates, spores can transfer to the male or vice versa. Then, when she lays her eggs, the spores end up on the egg and the leaf.

What’s the first thing a baby caterpillar does when it hatches? It eats its own eggshell—and with it, ingests the OE spores. That starts the cycle all over again.

When I first started raising butterflies, I didn’t know what OE was. My butterflies couldn’t hang on. Their wings were deformed. They couldn’t fly. It was heartbreaking.

But I did the research. I dug into the science from the University of Florida and several great butterfly resources—some specifically for monarchs. I’ve got all those materials if you’re curious.

What I learned is that OE is incredibly common. Around 95% of butterflies in general are infected to some degree. And in Fort Lauderdale and Miami, it’s closer to 99%. That’s because in Florida, we don’t have a natural die-off season. Our milkweed doesn’t die back in winter, and butterflies are here year-round—so the spores never go away.

That’s why I now bleach all my milkweed and take extra precautions. OE is persistent, but with the right steps, we can still raise strong, healthy butterflies.
So, what can we do—those of us who are totally butterfly-obsessed and passionate about saving the monarchs?

We bleach.
Yep. We bleach the eggs, and we bleach every single milkweed leaf that our monarchs eat. The parasite OE is specific to milkweed butterflies—so swallowtails don’t get OE, they get other things, but that’s just part of nature.

Actually, the whole reason I got into this in the first place goes way back to a 1974 issue of National Geographic. Monarch butterflies were on the cover. They featured the Michoacán forest in Mexico, with the beautiful oyamel fir trees where monarchs migrate every year.

Now, because of logging and habitat destruction—both in Mexico and along their migration route—the monarch population has been devastated. That issue stuck with me, but I didn’t start doing anything about it until about six years ago.

The woman who helped discover that migration route? She’s still alive—she lives in Canada! I went back and looked her up after all these years. Her story made a real impact on me, and now I’m hoping I can pass that spark on to you.

So here’s what happens when things go right.
I’ve got healthy caterpillars. They’ve eaten their bleached leaves, they’ve made their chrysalises, and they’ve emerged. They found their little cremaster spot and hung there for 24 hours. Now they’re ready to fly!

Sometimes I get males, sometimes females. With monarchs, it’s pretty easy to tell them apart.
The females have thicker veins in their wings. The males have two small black pheromone spots on their lower wings—those are what help attract the ladies. So, if I see those black spots, I know I’ve got a boy. No spots? It’s a girl.

Sometimes, when I release a female from my cage, I swear those males come zipping in out of nowhere and just snatch her away! I’m like, “Hey—give her a minute!” One time I thought they were fighting—it turned out, nope, they were mating.

Now, I don’t interrupt mating. That’s nature’s plan. But if the males are fighting, I’ll break them up. Monarchs are territorial, and the males are aggressive. I’ve had to separate them before.

When mating happens, they usually fly up into a tree, and it can go on for two to four hours. I’m not standing out there watching the whole time—but that’s what the experts say.

So now we’ve got them out, we can tell male from female, they’ve mated, and they’re ready for life! A monarch’s lifespan? Usually two to six weeks, unless it’s part of the migratory generation, which can live much longer—but that’s a whole other story.
So now, back to OE and what we can do about it.

Even if you don’t want to go as far as I do—I mean, the last thing I do before bed is check to make sure everyone has enough food to get through the night. These babies eat all night long! And in the morning? I have to decide who gets breakfast first—me or them. And let me tell you, they usually win.

But even if you don’t go full butterfly nanny, you can still make a huge difference:

🌱 Plant a butterfly garden.
Fill it with nectar flowers like pentas, lantana, and of course milkweed for the caterpillars.

🚫 Don't use pesticides.
This is just as important as planting. And I mean it—don’t spray anything. Not even organic stuff. I know a lot of people say, “Oh, but what about organic neem oil?” We’ll get to that, too. But for now, just don’t spray.

Let me tell you about mosquito spraying where I live. The county sprays for Zika and dengue—it’s a health issue. They use mosquito traps to monitor populations, and when the numbers get too high, they fog the area. I’m on the do-not-spray list, so they call me before they fog.

I live in an HOA, so everything is “maintained.” But I feel like Don Quixote fighting windmills—no one is allowed in my yard with pesticide, herbicide, fertilizer, nothing. I’ll go out with my secret weapon, Alan (wherever he is), and we cover the plants.

I can’t cover them all, but I try. I’ve got drop cloths, plastic sheets, and I even bring some plants into the screened porch. I know which ones I’ve covered thanks to little plant markers, so later when I need to gather leaves, I know they’re safe.

Because this mosquito spray? It has a long half-life. You cannot wash it off. And it can be fatal to butterflies, even in small amounts.
Organic only means it's not a chemical. Neem oil—it's still designed to kill. So if you spray with neem oil, your butterfly caterpillars are going to ingest it—they're going to die. And the typical sign of an issue is that they vomit green. On a white paper towel, it's really sad to get up in the morning the first time that that happened, and the paper towels are all green and my caterpillars are all dead. And that is pesticide.

So everybody in the whole community knows, “Oh, that’s the butterfly lady—don’t touch her yard, don’t touch her yard.” And I have signs that say “Do Not Spray.” But then they always have a new crew who doesn’t know any better. So that’s why I feel like Don Quixote.

Anyway, the green vomit here is typical—and they will die.

So here's my little PS plug for people like Busy Bee—they don’t spray their milkweed. When you go to Lowe’s and you go—I shouldn't say the right word—when you go to the big box stores and you see beautiful milkweed, you can almost guarantee that it is sprayed.

If you go and you see caterpillars on there, that doesn't necessarily mean it's safe—they may not have died yet. It takes a while, okay? So just because there's cats…

If you go and you see aphids by the plant—that means it’s not sprayed.

So the biggest thing you can do as keepers of our environment and our beautiful creatures is to not spray. I mean, do I have issues? Yeah, I have ants. And I’m very careful. Ants are predators of the eggs. I mean, everybody in the food chain has a purpose, and the ants do too.

So I will spot-treat. One of the things I use is Terro, because they take that bait back to the nest, so I don’t have to spray. I’m very careful where I do it. I wear nitrile gloves, and I can squish the bugs. The orange and black bugs are called milkweed bugs, and they’re all over your plants.

I take a bucket of soapy water with some Dawn in it and tap them into the bucket, and that kills them, okay? And I love a bucket full of milkweed bugs. However, other creatures need to eat these bugs—the milkweed bugs. So we never want to do something that will wipe out an entire segment of that population of the food chain.

I can guarantee you, even if you try, you won’t be able to do it, okay?

I have wasp traps in my yard because the wasps are predators of the babies. And once you see a wasp go after a caterpillar, it really does change what you think.

So it's a glass jar with a hole in the bottom. I fill it with cheap Walmart apple juice—they're not fussy, the wasps—and they go into the bottom and they don’t know how to get out.

I don’t want to kill all the wasps—they’re pollinators. They have a place in the food chain. So I don’t want you to think I’m out to eliminate anybody. We just have to do what we can do to make things better for them, okay?

So, these down here on the bottom are the spores, and that's a picture under the microscope. You can’t see the spores, okay?

And the other little thing is—so many people that try to do this and want to do this, and they’ll say, “My butterflies are perfect. Their wings are…” The chances are they don’t know.

Now I’ve just recently read an article by one of the gurus talking about this OE. And typically, I will look under the microscope by taping the butterfly’s abdomen—just putting the sticky tape on it—and then I take that tape, fold it in half, and look at it under the microscope. And I can see if it’s got the OE spores. Sometimes it’s a light case and sometimes it’s very heavy.

And the hardest part of what I do is euthanizing these butterflies. Sometimes they look perfect—absolutely perfect. And they came out of their chrysalis fine. And I look under the microscope, and it is a heavy infestation—not heavy enough to affect their wings or their looks. So you think it’s fine, and I think, “Can I really release this butterfly out into the wild to infect ones that don’t have it?”

So that’s a personal decision. It’s really tough. You have to be comfortable with what you do.

But my yard, when it’s up in full production—my butterflies—I’ve done this: I’ve taken some of the butterflies or I’ve brought a caterpillar in that I didn’t bleach the egg, okay? And that’s asking for trouble.

But my garden has become clean. And probably three or four out of five, if I bring in a caterpillar and test the butterfly—it doesn’t have OE. I mean, I was absolutely shocked at what had transpired over time.

Okay, but the other key thing that you can do with milkweed is make sure you cut it back, and that will give the chance for new growth to come out that doesn’t have OE yet, okay?

Cut it back two or three times a year—four times a year. I have milkweed in different places throughout my yard, because if you put it in one place, it’s like a buffet, and the wasps go, “Oh, just go right over there and you can get everything you need.”

Okay, so what I do is I will cut back this patch of milkweed—cut it back, let it come back—and then when that’s coming, I’ll cut back this patch. So it’s an ongoing process, and it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of work. But at any rate, it’s very rewarding when these little creatures come out.

And I will tell you a story that’s really very touching. I’ve always gone outside and released them like that. And if people are around or with their kids, they’ll come: “Julie, got any butterflies to release?”—whatever.

But my accountant passed away at a fairly young age, and I went to visit her mom and her dad. And they didn’t know I was doing butterflies. And I told Ellie about the butterflies, and she said, “Oh Julie, the next time you release one, will you release one in Karen’s name?” I said, “Sure, okay.”
So don't you know the next one that I released was a male. Of course, I wasn't going to name it Karen, so I had to wait for a female to come out—and she did. I took her out into the yard like I've released every other butterfly. But I did that, said a little prayer: “This is Karen. You go off and bring me back some babies.”

This butterfly flew all the way around my yard and came back and landed on my shoulder.

I have never—in a thousand butterflies a year—ever had something like that happen before or since.

I mean, there’s lots of folklore that goes with butterflies: that it’s someone touching you, someone visiting you. I mean, they're magical. That’s why the name of what I do is called The Magical World of Butterflies, because it really is magical. And when you go under a microscope, it becomes even more magical, because you see things you can’t see in real life.

Okay, so that covers that one.

This happens to be a queen who's got three antennae, and the kids always say, “Well, what's all that black stuff in there?”—because I do this at the schools. It's poop. That’s all they do—is poop. And I clean their cages an average of three to four times a day, because you've got to keep sanitary conditions.

Okay, so I bleach the eggs, I bleach the leaves, and I bleach all my containers. Everybody in the neighborhood drops off salad containers. I mean, look at what I’m doing to protect the environment—keeping the plastic out of the environment, okay?

Anyway, I bleach all the containers so everybody is clean. You've got to have clean, clean conditions.

Okay, so if we move over to this one—this is actually the life cycle of the monarch. I'm going to move these away so you can go look at them, but I want you to be able to see what creatures and live things I have.

Okay, there’s the tarsal claw. Again, this is all done with the microscope.

The zebra longwing—the little black and yellow one—that is our state butterfly, okay? And I saw on the handouts that Busy Bee did, about the atalas. I actually was fortunate enough to go to a class where the instructor took us and showed us a colony of atalas.

And that was really just exciting, only because we thought they were extinct—no more.

And—don’t—well, I’ve planted coontie in my yard. But you know, I’ll be pushing daisies before I have atalas, because they typically like the east. And I’m actually west—even of I-95. So if I have an atala, you’ll probably hear me yell.

Anyway, okay, let me see...

Chrysalis—here is a good example of a chrysalis that is transparent. And this is in a... this is in a—let’s see—this is a swallowtail. And you can actually see all the markings on their wings. It’s amazing how that changes.

Here is the cremaster. This is an up-close one. It looks just like the fuzzy end of the Velcro. And then the top of the cremaster is like the little loops. So when it finds that—it’s, you know—it’s amazing. It'll just stay that way.

Okay, so here’s a little one—creatures hanging on. This is a Polydamas swallowtail. And I practiced a long time saying “Polydamas” before I called the University of Illinois to get some information—because I wanted to pronounce it correctly, right? Polydamas swallowtail.

And he was so cute. He said, “Julie, it’s Polynomous.”
I said, “You have no idea how long it took me to get Polygamous.”

Alright, so anyway—these guys are really cute. I call them my little Tootsie Rolls.

And nobody came today! I told them we’d have a good crowd, they’d meet a lot of people—they had no interest in coming. So you’ll have to look at the picture. But they do look like Tootsie Rolls.

And the other thing is that—oh, here’s a good one of him rolling his proboscis out. Okay...

Um, where was I going with that? Okay, senior moment—it’ll come back.

Anyway, so I’m going to move the storyboards out so you can see them. And I’m going to go behind the tables. And my secret weapon, Alan—my husband—knows just about as much as I do. He just doesn’t stay up till one o’clock in the morning to watch a baby hatch, okay? But he knows about it. He knows about it. So he can answer questions too.

And I really want you to see what I have, because you won’t see that in your yards. You’ll see the butterflies fly, and you’ll see the caterpillars, but you won’t—I mean, the thrill of seeing this thing up close...

And use the magnifying glass. The kids have a hard time with the magnifying glasses—but we won’t, okay? Use it so you can actually see what’s going on.

Now—does anybody have questions?