I was very dissappointed to lose my one BST cat which was about to pupate and was thinking of ordering some larvae at this site I found here: http://home.earthlink.net/~flutter/Garden_Web/Home.html
Has anyone ever done this, would you recommend it and if so, can you recommend a site?
Thanks,
Maureen
Has anyone ever purchased butterfly larvae?
This butterfly place looks decent,
however, even mail order caterpillars can be infected if you don't know how they are kept, raised, and mailed out. Call and ask questions before ordering. Also, if you have a choice, choose eggs.
Otherwise, it is better to go find the eggs off the host plant yourself.
Watch the butterflies during their flight schedule. The monarch is the easiest - its flights in your area are probably from May through Aug./Sept. You know that it tends to like milkweed. Watch the monarchs around the milkweed. They will lay their eggs right in front of you and you can go pick 'em when she is done. They will lay eggs on the plants when they are only 5" out of the ground! I have a 35mm pic of that somewhere...
I was watching an orange butterfly ( I think a fritillary) fluttering around a baby elm out the window. There isn't any other reason for it to flutter around an elm. I watched it until it flew away, taking note of where it paused and then went out to look for the eggs. They were hard to see b/c they were green like the leaves, but they were there.
You will have a higher success rate if you raise the cats in a cage inside the house in a sunny window to keep them safe from pests and disease. And a higher success rate if you start with eggs.
I personally always use potted plants for feed b/c the host plants generally re-leaf themselves unless over-grazed.
Well, they got back to me and didn't have any available anyway. I'm planting fennel and parsley so I hope I will get some BST cats that way next year.
You're right about the monarchs--I watched several of them lay eggs on the milkweed, within 5 feet of me. Then I started seeing the caterpillars, and I put them in containers so the birds wouldn't get them. That's How I got started and I think it's going to become a permanent deal, I love doing this. Next year I'll learn from my mistakes and be indoors with alot more host plants growing. I barely made it through feeding them all this time.
Maureen
I think a lot of us have had the problem of running out of the host plant food or barely avoiding running out. Last year I ran out when I had both the Queen and Monarch cats eating the milkweed. I had to make a milkweed run to a trusted source. I was lucky to find any. Well, I have more milkweed this year and hopefully it won't happen again. The Monarchs haven't appeared yet and I only have one Queen cat right now.
I ran out of food when I had too many cats in one cage and the plant couldn't regenerate THAT fast!