Finally found more than one!

[Robin L.]

Last night on my way to the grocery store, I conveniently made a detour to a large meadow where I normally find the majority of all the cats and eggs that I collect in a typical year. To date this season, I had found just five of them there since June 4th, a single egg at a time. Well, last night started out slowly again, with absolutely nothing on plants where I really should have been finding them by now. After some further searching however, I slowly began to have some luck, and after about half an hour I ended up with seven first instars and two eggs, which served to double my number for the year to eighteen. I still have not seen an adult Monarch, nor am I finding anything on my own beautiful milkweed in my yard. But they are apparently around now, and hopefully their numbers will start to increase.

[Mona Miller]

I'm working on increasing here. I have Monarchs in my screen tent and will breed them and let them go.

I checked my female for OE. She is clean, but I had 2 caterpillars and 3 pupae (chrysalis) die. The caterpillars leaked green and the pupae turned brown. I think this weather is stressing the milkweed and making it more toxic.