By Diane St. John
SEPT-OCT 2018 – The summer of 2018 has turned out to be a very good year for monarch butterflies in our state. The milkweed has had a great growing year and the monarchs arrived earlier than normal.
I found my first eggs right after we had the damaging storms in May and am wondering if they were carried here by wind rather than their normal northern migration.
At Natureworks in Northford I saw monarch eggs on our display garden milkweed in May, a pleasant shock as I had not seen an actual butterfly and would not see one for several more weeks
I have talked with many Connecticut residents and they are reporting seeing more monarchs and chewing evidence of monarch caterpillars on milkweed than in past years. At Natureworks in July, as I type this, we have released 55 butterflies. Years ago on this very day, we were just releasing our first.
The butterflies I raise and release early in the summer will only live 2-6 weeks and will be focusing on making more monarchs. The monarchs born in September will live for months and will be focusing on migrating to their winter habitat in Mexico.
I am hoping to continue to see the population thrive here this summer and that we’ll have a large population in September that will migrate successfully to Mexico and the overwintering population numbers will be up.
The peak monarch migration in Connecticut is Sept. 8-20. Any butterfly born in September can be tagged and its flight tracked with tiny tags from MonarchWatch.org
I will be tagging monarchs all month at Natureworks and invite others to help and learn. Join me in helping the monarch population by:
- Planting milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) and other types of Asclepias in your garden, and
- Restrict the use of all pesticides and allow nature to balance itself with beneficial insects to naturally take care of the destructive ones. No matter the size, one yard at a time can make a big difference!
Diane St John is The Butterfly Lady at Natureworks Organic Garden Center in Northford.
