I know I am not supposed to use any insecticide in my butterfly garden, but I have a persistent problem with some nasty bug that keeps eating all my mildweed, leaving nothing for the monarchs! These bugs start of as tiny yellow orange bugs, then grow to large black bugs with an orange stripe around the middle. They eat all the leaves off the milkweed. What are they and what, if anything, can I do about them?
Milkweed bug problem
What I did w/ my milkweed beetles is I filled a container with soapy water and plucked them from my milkweed and dropped them in. It's cruel but I prefer monarchs to milkweed beetles. And monarchs don't bore holes into the plant and kill it off.
If you are very careful and use pyrethrum, it will kill the milkweed beetles. I try to only spray it right on the beetles, it works almost instantly and within 20 minutes it breaks down with no residual effects. I wouln't spray it if the monarch cats were present though.
I found that soapy water worked really well. What I did tho was put it in a bowl, and then I just shook the branch over the bowl, and they just fell right in. The bigger ones I would just just thump across the yard. LOL Apparently I might have killed some that way since they didn't do too much damage. Thinking about it tho...my milkweed bugs usually just sucked on the pods but didn't eat the actual leaves. Try soap anyways.
Real soap, though, not detergent.