Hummingbird and Butterfly Gardening: DAILY BUTTERFLIES Page 15, 1 by thea611

thea611 wrote:
Well, I've been lurking like mad, watching everybody's incredible achievements and feeling my BST experiences are a little too ho-hum to write about. Not that I'm bored with them, I've been having the best time this summer with my butterflies!!!!!! But once I started with my BST cats, I wanted to concentrate just on them, having never raised butterflies before, and not get myself too involved with other species. As of right now, nine of mine have eclosed, and every release has been emotional! I love/hate saying goodbye to them as they lift off from my hand, and fly away!
I'm a little nervous about my first batch, which I brought inside the last week of July. One eclosed on August 3rd. The remainder (23, I think) are still in chrysallis. I later brought in a batch of 17, and then 6 (or 8, not sure, gets a little confusing!), and the later ones are the ones eclosing. Why would the first batch not be?
Yesterday, bless timing, I finally got to see one actually coming out of the chrysallis!!! Very thrilling! But now that I see the difficulty of exiting the chrysallis, I understand the importance of it being adequately secured to the surface. This is making me worry about the one chrysallis that fell to the bottom of the crate a few weeks ago. Deb, I think it was you who used glue to affix some of your chrysalides to a ribbon? I'll have to try to find your posts about it; I'm so afraid of using glue, is there any chance of it sinking thru, and hurting the developing wings? Have your guys been able to get out of their chrysalides all right?
Here's a pic of three of the five that eclosed yesterday. The last one eclosed mid-afternoon. Boy, what a great day, I loved it!!!!