Teaching with Monarchs

Aphids and pests

Yellow Milkweed Aphids:

Milkweed tips are often covered with small yellow aphids. Before you kill them, look at them closely. Notice how they all seem to swing their abdomens in circles all together? It is almost as if they are line dancers!

But we need to kill these critters if they are infesting our milkweed in great numbers. They can deform a plant and cause it to become unacceptable as caterpillar food. Some people simply squish them with their fingers while others use a soap solution they spray on with a spray bottle. If neither method works, you can use Malathion IF you rinse your plant afterward and adult butterflies cannot land on the plant while it has Malathion on it. Malathion will not harm a Monarch caterpillar.

Spider Mites:

Although many people try different methods and chemicals to rid a plant of spider mites, it is easy to be rid of them with a water sprinkler. These mites are first noticed simply as sick plants. The leaves become pale. Once the infestation becomes bad on a plant, webbing starts to cover the plant. If the infestation is light with no webbing, simply place the plant outside with a sprinkler on it. You may need to run the sprinkler for several days. Spider mites hate water. If the infestation is bad or if you have extra host plant and can spare the loss, cut off all the leaves and place them in a plastic bag, seal it, and throw it away. Then place your leafless plant under a sprinkler.

If your plant is growing in your garden, place a water sprinkler where it will run for hours each day on the plant.

Malathion and other insecticides will kill most butterfly caterpillars. If you spray Malathion on your milkweed, be sure it does not land on any other species of host or nectar plant.

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Predators

From cats to lizards, mice to roaches, wasps to birds, there are many predators that see our butterflies as food.

Some predators as well as diseases are purchased by gardeners to control caterpillars which eat their plants. Praying mantis is one predator which is purchased and released for this purpose. Bacillus thuringiensis is one of several diseases used in gardens and fields to control caterpillars.

If it were not for disease, predators, parasitoids and parasites, we would be scraping butterflies off automobile windshields. They do serve a purpose in nature. It is said that only two or so eggs become adult butterflies.

An incomplete list of predators: ants, roaches, lizards, praying mantises, birds, robber flies, assassin bugs, ambush bugs, mice, rats, squirrels, mites, katydids, assassin bug, spiders, wasps, frogs, mud daubers, cats, and dragon flies.

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Parasites and Parasitoids

From flies to wasps, our butterflies are often eaten as eggs, larvae, or chrysalises. This is just a mention of a few of these enemies of our butterflies.

Tachinid Fly

Tachinid flies lay their eggs either on the host plant, on the caterpillar, or in the caterpillar. Others will enter caterpillars as maggots. There are many species of tachinid flies. After the caterpillar pupates, a fly larva (maggot) eats its way out of the chrysalis and drops to the ground. Or in our case, they drop to the bottom of the rearing container. This larva pupates into a tiny pupa. Days or weeks later, a fly emerges which resembles a housefly. These flies are hairy, though, and will mate and lay eggs in more caterpillars.

Chalcid Wasp

These tiny chalcid wasps emerge from butterfly and moth chrysalises. They eat a tiny hole in the chrysalis and crawl out. They often mate immediately and are ready to infect other chrysalises.

Instead of a butterfly forming inside the chrysalis, many little wasps fully form while eating the butterfly chrysalis.

Trichogramma Wasp

Trichogramma wasps are so efficient at killing butterfly eggs that they are raised in laboratories and sold for release in gardens and fields. The purpose of releasing them is to protect crops and plants from ‘worms’ (which include butterfly caterpillars) that eat plants.

A trichogramma wasp lays her eggs in a butterfly egg. When her eggs hatch, the larvae eat the inside of the butterfly egg. Instead of a caterpillar hatching, many little wasps crawl out of the egg.

Mites

Mites can be a problem for caterpillars. These mites are on a White Peacock caterpillar.

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Shady Oak Butterfly Farm
12876 SW CR 231
Brooker, FL 32622