way too early...

[freda]

I really just don't get it! I follow this site; I know how far north the monarchs have been reported and my two sightings just don't make sense to me. Yesterday in Winnipeg, 200 km west of here, I was certain that it was a monarch that flashed across the windshield of my parked vehicle. I jumped out to follow it by sight but didn't get any better look at it. I was sure I must have been mistaken. Today at 'camp' I checked many of my dozens of milkweed plants and was able to get a reasonable macro shot of a single egg on an 8" high milkweed plant. I only have three days to follow the development of this egg or to document more, as I'm going to be in Tennessee for a week, but I will watch carefully over these three days. My concern is that there is a huge gap of empty map between the most northern reported sighting and my location in Kenora, ON...I am having some difficulty attaching a file but will keep at it.

[Mona Miller]

http://www.learner.org/jnorth/monarch/s ... 52010.html
It is explained on Journey North. Do you follow their data? Here in my area, I haven't seen anything, yet. But, there have been a few other sightings.

The problem is that all over the US and Canada, there are butterflies being released for many events. Are we seeing natural migration or are we seeing releases?

[freda]

Thanks, Mona, your theory on Monarch releases for weddings makes good sense. I'm going to do some searching to find some details on the who and when. Last Mothers' Day I bought a rosebowl containing two Painted Lady crysalids and I think I remember this vendor saying that she does Monarch releases. Good thinking! That possibility DOES kind of take the fun out of my record-keeping for this year, though...

We had a great year in '07, releasing 155 Monarchs from our garden. My husband was diagnosed with a terminal illness in the spring of '08 and passed away a year later, in April '09. I took a bit of a hiatus from Monarch Mania but this year I'm hoping to be ready for their early June arrival. We HAVE had Monarchs in Kenora this time of year, but this has been a cold wet spring and I assumed things would be off their usual pattern. Journey North shows the northern-most reported egg in mid-southern Minnesota.

Do we know if butterflies raised in captivity, temperature-timed for emergence, if they have the same mating and reproductive success as wild specimens? Could this be a factor in why there is only one egg in a garden with dozens and dozens of healty milkweed? I suppose one of our returning tree swallows may have landed a bonus of a female Monarch filled with eggs, before she had time to deposit them.

[Mona Miller]

I've been told Monarchs riding on the backs of birds is a myth. Unless a female is at the end of her life that is her normal way of laying eggs. She will leave one here and there and move on. Egg dumping is done by females that need to lay before they die or those in captivity. I breed Monarchs for conservation. Inside my tent, a female will lay hundreds of eggs. I usually keep them 3 days and then release them back into the wild.

[Paul Cherubini]

The University of Kansas and the University of Minnesota also collectively ship tens of thousands caterpillars to schools and individuals for them to raise and release.

Nevertheless, when you do the math, the number of releases per State per week is extremely low in relation to the Statewide density of the monarch population, hence it is extremely unlikely that any released butterflies will be spotted by the people who report their sightings to Journey North.

The past few days there have been monarch sightings reported to Journey North in RURAL areas of central and northern Minnesota, far away from big cities where most captive raised monarchs are released. Considering all the recent sightings in central and northern Minnesota I'm not too surprised monarchs have reached Winnipeg and Kenora as well. They reached those latitudes in other years by the third week in May such as in 2001, 2007, etc.

[Mona Miller]

Doing math? How many eggs does a captive gravid female lay? 400-600 As many as a wild female. It's still a release. Monarch Watch does not distribute to the western states or Canada, but caterpillars, raised to adulthood and released do travel pretty far. The release industry wouldn't want to take the blame for messing up natural migration data would they?

[Paul Cherubini]

Simple math. Example: If there are 100,000,000 first generation spring migrants in the wild, very roughly around 5% (5,000,000) of them will be in Minnesota in May. If butterfly breeders ship around 300,000 adults and caterpillars per year for release, mostly in April-October, that’s only a maximum of 50,000 per month. Of that 50,000, only around 5% (2,500) would be shipped to Minnesota per month.

5,000,000 divided by 2,500 = 2,000. So wild monarchs in Minnesota would outnumber the captive raised ones by a factor of very roughly 2,000 to one. Thus the chances that a Journey North observer in Minnesota (or the Canadian provinces north of Minnesota) would encounter a captive raised monarch in the month of May would be in the neighborhood of 2,000 to one (an extremely remote chance).

[Mona Miller]

Actually in warmer areas butterflies are raised and released year round. Many breeders release starting in March in the North. Where in the world do you get the figures that you are talking about? Many breeders don't even belong to Associations and there are breeders in the US and Canada. What are the real numbers? How does someone know if it is a release or natural? Real answer--they don't.

[Paul Cherubini]

In the north milkweed doesn't emerge from the ground until late April or May, hence monarchs breeders in the north do not have monarchs available for release in the northern States until later in May or June. Very, very few northern breeders overwinter large quantities of milkweed in greenhouses (too expensive to keep the greenhouses heated). Southern monarch breeders do not ship to cold northern States in March and April as the butterflies would not be able to fly well in the cold and disappointed wedding and funeral customers would want their money back.

With regard to figures, since about 1 hectare worth of monarchs (50,000,000 butterflies) in Mexico remigrated back to the USA in March, it is reasonable to assume they produced very roughly 100,000,000 new first generation butterflies that are now migrating throughout the eastern 2/3rds of the USA and reasonable to assume very roughly 5% of them are in Minnesota right now. Even if you want to use very different figures, you will still end up concluding wild monarchs vastly outnumber captive released ones, hence the chances that a captive reared one would be seen and reported to Journey North are extremely remote. The main problem with the accuracy of the Journey North sight record database is observers reporting sightings of monarchs that were actually other species of butterflies (Viceroys, Red Admirals, Painted Ladies, Swallowtails, etc.).

[Mona Miller]

Many northern butterfly enthusiast (United States and Canada) and butterfly breeders raise tropical milkweed; therefore, they don't need to wait for native milkweed to emerge. Most butterfly breeders that I know don't bother with the natives, they raise tropical milkweed for breeding Monarchs. I myself have tropical that I wintered over and often plant flats of it, too.

There was less than a hectare that survived this year due to low population count and winter storms.

Again, how does one tell if a Monarch is naturally migrating in an area or has been flown in for release.

[Paul Cherubini]

Yes, some small time northern butterfly breeders and hobbiests overwinter small quantities of tropical milkweed, but not enough to raise and ship tens of thousands of monarchs in March, April or May to other northern States (with the possible exception of the University of Kansas which raises and ships thousands of caterpillars to States east of the Rocky Mountains that were raised on an artificial diet).

Monarch mortality was not measured at the overwintering sites this past winter as it was in previous winters after storms and freezes. Photos of masses of dead monarchs at multiple overwintering sites were not posted either as had been done in previous years. Thus the assumption that “less than a hectare survived” doesn’t have much objective scientific basis.

I don’t understand why you keep asking: “how does one tell if a Monarch is naturally migrating in an area or has been flown in for release” considering that the chances that any Journey North observer would ever encounter a captive raised monarch in the month of May are extremely remote. In other words, if breeders and hobbiests placed bright red tags on both hindwings of the small numbers of monarchs they ship for release to the northern States in May, the chances that any any Journey North observers would ever encouter and report even one of them are very remote.

[Mona Miller]

Still not convinced... Reality, there is no way to tell whether it is an artificial or natural release.

[freda]

I'm really open and welcome to clarification on this one: to my knowledge I've never seen a Viceroy in our area. It's range is usually listed as "southern Canada" but in examining many species and information from many sites, that term usually refers to southern Ontario! The southern borders of the prairie provinces again have a different habitat and may qualify in some instances. Manitoba east of Prawda and Ontario west of Sioux Ste Marie,don't fit into either prairie habitat or the Ontario definition which seems to end at about London. But I'm truly interested in learning, so if you have more information on Viceroys in our area or other data that may be relevant, please feel free to add it here. Today I saw two "large orange/brown/black" butterflies between Prawda, MB and Winnipeg. I stopped at a patch of milkweed which I monitor throughout the season and while there is an abundance of healthy plants, no sign of eggs.

...energetic dialogue!

[Mona Miller]

Thankfully, Viceroys are not a species that is allowed to be transported across state lines. But, Canada has different rules than the United States on butterfly releases. Viceroys do resemble Monarchs, but they are smaller and the hindwing has a line across (most of the time). Viceroys also do not use milkweed as a host plant. "It feeds mainly on willow (Salix spp.) and poplar (Populus spp.) as well as a few other tree species." (taken from the website below)

http://www.cbif.gc.ca/spp_pages/butterf ... eroy_e.php
"Range: The Viceroy is widespread in Canada. It is resident from Nova Scotia to Quebec and Ontario, north to James Bay, and in the Prairie Provinces to the northern borders. There are records from Fort Smith and Hay River in the Northwest Territories. It was formerly resident in the southern interior of British Columbia, but was last recorded there at Lillooet in 1930 (Guppy et al., 1994)."

I raise many species of butterflies/moths for conservation.

[Paul Cherubini]

I definately remember seeing Viceroys just south of Winnipeg and near the Minnesota border town of Roseau during my trip to extreme northwestern Minnesota in early August 2007 and so I had to be careful not to confuse them with monarchs. Each year recently emerged monarchs start clustering and migrating south during the first week of August in extreme northern Minnesota: http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k75/4af/gryglc.jpg

[JoAnn]

Hi:

Thought I would jump in here with a couple of comments. Firstly, I live in Thunder Bay, Ontario (not far from Kenora where Freda lives).

I have been carefully monitoring my milkweed plants for over a week now as I had many eggs on my milkweed plants plus I got a glimpse of a Monarch twice recently. Yesterday my brother sent me pictures of the many pups on his plants here in Thunder Bay so I checked mine today and I too have quite a few 1/2" pups on my plants plus some eggs. I lost several milkweed plants last winter so hopefully between my brother, sister and I we will have enough milkweed to feed them all this summer. After two summers of very few Monarchs it appears to be a good year for them here. We are just beginners but I believe they are early this year too.

Viceroys are common in my garden as are White Admirals, cabbage whites and occasionally swallowtails plus a couple others I cannot identify.