Please pick up at the Aldo Leopold Nature Center, 330 Femrite Dr, Monona, WI 53716.
After you register, you will receive a pickup date and time by email. Don't miss it! Problems? Contact monarchs@aldoleopoldnaturecenter.org
Your eggs or caterpillars will be on a stem of milkweed--the stem sticking out of a jar of water with a lid. The water won't spill but you must protect the monarchs from heat, sun, or bumps (fragile!). Hopefully, the jar will fit in your car's cup holder.
If you have some empty glass jars with metal lids at home, we'd love to have a few (but not Mason or ball jars.) They need to fit in a car's cup holders.
Planning for the pickup
Keep in mind there's work to do after your pickup. If you are picking up for more than a few classes, you'll need the help and cooperation of other teachers. Milkweed and equipment has to be found and the eggs distributed. An hour or so might be required.
The eggs we provide have a label with the date they were laid. Eggs hatch ~4 days after laying. If you can see the black head of the caterpillar at the top of the egg through the shell, then they will hatch within half a day. Often the eggs come with a leaf diagram which helps you count and divide eggs among classrooms.
Freshly hatched caterpillars need to be transferred to fresh milkweed food, using a fine watercolor brush or triangle of ripped paper towel. As you lift it the caterpillar will attach itself to the brush with a silk thread, so make sure you don't yank it away when you withdraw the brush from the milkweed where you placed them.
There are two ways to care for hatching eggs
For most teachers, Method #1 will be best. Both methods ideally require close supervision of hatching at home.
Method #1: Hatch on leaf where they were laid:
Usually, teachers receive a leaf or sprig of milkweed with many eggs attached. It's easiest to let them hatch there. But if there are many eggs close together, or if the food is not of good quality, some of the first caterpillars to hatch will eat unhatched eggs. You could lose 10-20% of the eggs to cannibalism. And if the food is poor quality (dried out), some of the caterpillars will leave and become lost. The worst thing to happen is for the leaves to dry and curl up--then your caterpillars become trapped and it's very time-consuming to uncurl each leaf and look for the caterpillars to transfer them. So, it's best to take the hatching eggs home and remove caterpillars soon after they hatch, putting them on very fresh milkweed sprigs of at least 4 leaves.
Method #2: Hatch in ice cube tray:
Cut out a tiny square (1/16" or 1/8" on a side) of leaf with the egg on it. Place each egg in a compartment on a white ice cube tray. Balance the tray on a wine glass, with its base in a saucer of water. This keeps caterpillars from escaping and prevents spiders from eating the eggs at night. Mist the eggs or tiny caterpillars a few times each day. Check the tray every two hours, (except when you sleep). When the caterpillars emerge, they are easily seen and transferred with a brush to fresh food. Don't leave them on the tray for more than 8 hours, or they may decide to rappel down on silk and disappear.
Which method you use depends on your circumstances. You could cut up the leaves and distribute eggs to individual teachers for hatching. But it's probably best for one teacher to supervise hatching and put the tiny caterpillars on a fresh milkweed sprig for each teacher.
If your eggs are massed together, or on the stem of a milkweed, then method #1 is best because the eggs would be too hard to cut off.
If you receive unattached eggs in an ice cube tray or dish, then method #2 is obviously best. Method #2 is also best if the eggs will be on milkweed that is dried out or poor quality at hatching time. If, when dividing eggs between classrooms, teachers end up with say, half a leaf, then probably method #2 is best. This is because half a leaf will quickly dry out and curl up. To use method #1, the minimum would be eggs on one whole leaf, with its stem in a floral tube with water. When I am hunting eggs in the wild, I use method #2 because I come home with a number of half leaves, each with a single egg. These leaf fragments would obviously dry out before hatching.
Hatching over a long weekend?
Special case--you cannot supervise hatching, because eggs are due to hatch over the Labor Day weekend, and you will be out of town. If the sprig with eggs looks of reasonable quality and not dried out, then you can leave the eggs to hatch on the sprig unattended. However, you must protect them from spiders and put them in a bin with partially open lid (misted before you leave) to keep the humidity high. Then transfer them to fresh food as soon as you return.
Here's an example: Amy wants to pick up Wednesday morning. The eggs will probably hatch on Thursday, and the milkweed they are on looks fresh. So, if she takes the eggs to school and the teachers distribute and prepare them with fresh food on Thursday or Friday, the newly hatched caterpillars will have fresh food over the Labor Day weekend and won't need care during the holidays. A very fresh sprig of 4-6 milkweed leaves in water will last perhaps 4+ days. Then they need to be transferred by hand to fresh food. Transfer of tiny caterpillars is the most work of raising monarchs, so the longer you can make the food last, the less work.
Over the long weekend, the caterpillars need to be protected from spiders (place jar with sprig in a saucer of water) and be protected from drying out--keep out of direct sun and mist daily. In this case since you can't mist over the weekend, placing the jar in a bin with a lid (cracked open for oxygen), then misting it before you leave, is sufficient.
The case of the missing caterpillars
Gail decided to use method #1. She carefully washed out an aquarium, dried it, and put the ice cube tray inside resting on top of a block of wood. She then covered the aquarium with a mesh to keep out spiders. The eggs were about to hatch when she left school. But when she returned the following morning, all 10 eggs had hatched, but only 4 caterpillars were left on the ice cube tray.
Hypothesis A: Eaten by spiders? No, spiders were excluded by mesh, and none could have hidden inside, because the aquarium was washed.
Hypothesis B: Lethal environment? No. Gail kept the aquarium out of direct sun and away from heaters or air vents (drying). Pesticides in school are unlikely. Chlorine residue in aquarium not possible because it was rinsed thoroughly.
Hypothesis C: Tiny hatching caterpillars got tired of walking round and round the ice cube tray, left it, and became lost. Yes, this is most likely. When not on a white background, they are nearly invisible. Gail left them alone for up to 15 hours overnight, plenty of time to escape, especially with a wood block underneath. A wine glass would be better, as it slows them down. Even then, they can "rappel down" on silk.