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Our season started 4/1/11 with the swamp, narrowleaf and green antelope horn milkweeds sprouting from last year. By the end of April, most of the milkweed that was planted last year started to sprout. Common, tall green, Hall’s, prairie, desert, butterfly and redring were the slowest to emerge. Because my husband had open heart surgery at the end of March, our official monitoring started in May.
As in past years, before each butterfly is released, we checked it for Oe using a Celestron 44340 microscope. We used the tape method as shown on the Testing page of the Monarch Parasite website. I afixed the monarch tape print to a glass slide to check it and then moved the tape to an index card and sent it to this group for their records.
All of our data is kept on spreadsheets. As each monarch is released or dies, I enter the data on the sheets and on the Monarch Larva Monitoring Project (MLMP) website, which is one of a handful of monitoring projects that monarch enthusiasts can be involved in to aid research. This year we are also monitoring the milkweed in our yard. Below you will find links so you can view my monarch and milkweed spreadsheets.
1st Milkweed sighting: 4/1/11 I found the swamp milkweed, green antelope horn and narrowleaf growing in our yard.
1st Milkweed blooming: 4/29/11 The poke milkweed has small buds.
1st Monarch Butterfly sighting: 6/3/11
1st Monarch Egg or Larva sighting: 6/10/11
Size: ½ acre. Type: suburban gardens and lawn. Sun and shade. Planting zone 6.
Throughout my gardens you will find hostas of various types (Sum and Substance is my favorite), lily of the valley, chameleon plant (highly invasive - watch where you plant this one), evening primrose, treefoil, daylilies, rudebeckia, roses, bleeding hearts, iris, rose of sharon, bee balm, azaleas, lemon balm, coneflowers and others. Wild plants that came with our property that I have encouraged in my gardens include ajuga, Virginia bluebells, sensitive ferns, jack-in-the-pulpit, touch-me-nots, and violets. For the most part, we let biodiversity rule in respect to the lawn. I only remove thistles and poison ivy (Joel and Shane are very allergic to poison ivy). Sometimes we treat it with lime, so the moss does not take over too much. To see photos of each garden where milkweed is planted, go to the Valerie’s Gardens page.
Data for this site is submitted to the MLMP website and you can check it out: Valerie’s Garden at MLMP.
We now have over 350 plants including over 30 species and subspecies. As I get photos of them, they will be added to the Milkweed ID & Sales page. You can view the I collected for the milkweed characteristics for MLMP in 2 formats: Milkweed Study 2011 - Excel or Milkweed Study 2011 - PDF
Excel Viewer Download If you do not have Excel, but wish to view the spreadsheets, you can download this free viewer from Microsoft.
Instead of posting an extensive data summary on this website for 2011, you can view our data in 2 formats: Monarch Study 2011 - Excel or Monarch Study 2011 - PDF. When I upload revised data sheets, I will post a notice on Facebook and Twitter. The spreadsheets are set up to collect data for MLMP and Monarch Watch tagging. Much of this data will be submitted to the MLMP website and you can check it out under the above links for each site. If you wish to copy the format of my Excel sheets for your own monarch monitoring, feel free to do so. There is also a sheet that shows the other insects that we have collected and raised.
Excel Viewer Download If you do not have Excel, but wish to view the spreadsheets, you can download this free viewer from Microsoft.
Below are a few key notes of interest:
Number of Eggs Collected: 32
Number of Larvae Collected: 53
Number of Butterflies Released: 31
Monarchs are tagged starting in August when the golden rod blooms. Apparently, the changes in temperature cause changes in their body structure and the ones born at the end of the summer are the ones that will migrate south.
The tags we used are numbered: PEN850-879
| Reared and Released: Total Tagged | Catch and Release: Total Tagged |
Total Tagged |
| 28 | 0 | 28 |
Overall, we did not see many butterflies this summer. Even one of the neighbors noticed the decrease in the lep population, especially in the monarchs. Of course, since we did not release many this year, there were fewer for everyone to enjoy. Ironically, we had greater quantities of milkweed and parsley (for the black swallowtails) than we have had in past years. So it was not a lack of host plants that caused this. Granted, the monarch population in general has been down, but I think in our case it was caused by Oe. The first monarchs that I collected in June were infected. Then in August I caught a female that was heavily infected. Initially, I tagged and released her. After I checked her sample, I ran back outside and caught her again and destroyed her. Of the eggs that I collected from her (which I moved to bleached milkweed), only 2 lived to be healthy adults. If we would not have had the Oe problems, we’d have had lots of monarchs. We did not have any fly or wasp vicitims this year.
I gave my parents 2 tropical milkweed plants and they had a very good season with them. They probably had more monarchs than we did! We raised 16 of them and they are listed on the parasitism spreadsheet as "Grandpa’s Garden". My parents have requested more tropical milkweed for next year.
As for milkweed, the monarchs liked the tropical (no surprise there) and narrowleaf the best. Last year they liked the poke, but the tussock moths and the milkweed weevils destroyed my poke plants. Milkweed weevils also caused great destruction of the seedpods early in the season. Once I figured out that they were responsible, I started to squish them and by the end of the season I was able to harvest a fair amount of milkweed seeds. Next year I plan to squish the pesky weevils from the very start!