Today I constructed a box with a mote and added three milkweed plants. In order to easily find the chrysalises it is best to keep the caterpillars contained in a small area.
I plucked the largest caterpillars off the original milkweed plants and place them on the plants surrounded by the mote.
Yesterday the surprise chrysalis I mentioned in the previous post split and a shiny new male monarch emerged! You can tell the gender by looking for two dark spots on the lower half of the wings.
You can clearly see the two black markings just to the left and right of the abdomen in the image below.
I took inventory of the caterpillars on all the plants and my final tally was sixteen! Quite a good little crop and I am hoping for more visits from egg laying females when the sun come back out!
