How our program began
In 2013, the Chairman of Friends of Lake Wingra, Paul Dearlove, suggested we help Wingra School, a private school serving children in grades K-8, improve environmental offerings in one class with field trips to Lake Wingra, along with an environmental service projet.
We tried a field trip. Walking to the lake turned out to be chaotic; time was wasted getting there. So, instead we looked for classroom activities, eventually deciding on raising butterflies. We ordered a rather uninspiring kit from a biological supply firm—a few painted lady caterpillars cost about $100, including FedEx shipping.
Stephanie Robinson, a volunteer, organized the project and presented information to the children. Besides the butterflies, we came up with a project called “Schoolyards to Backyards.” It involved sending a flyer about butterflies and milkweed home with the kids. The kids then planted native plants and milkweed at three locations on school grounds. Then they took milkweed seedlings home to plant.
Finding our own eggs
I reasoned we could save a lot of money if we found our own butterflies locally. And besides, monarchs are larger and more beautiful. So, in 2014, I found my first monarch eggs and began raising caterpillars. It was time-consuming to search--in July, I could only find about five eggs an hour. Another problem was--which rearing method to use? On the web people described so many different methods, employing a variety of containers and other equipment. It was very confusing for a beginner.
Soon I had successfully reared eggs to butterflies, but my technique wasn't efficient—I wasted a lot of time. Nevertheless, the project’s potential was demonstrated. Next, I took monarchs to five classrooms at Thoreau Elementary School, gave a show and tell, and left the caterpillars for the students to raise. When I ran into one of the teachers the following spring, he said, “The kids are still talking about the monarchs!” I knew I had to continue.
Developing the "standard method"
In 2015, my goal was to become more efficient, add schools, and find new venues and ways to interact with kids. I set out to develop a “standard method” for raising caterpillars. I took the best advice from many accounts on the internet, learning how to raise monarchs with inexpensive, readily available equipment— “standardized” equipment. I boiled it all down to write an instruction manual for teachers.
Liz McBride assisted with raising the monarchs, editing and illustrating the manuals, and printing them. I took volunteers on field trips to help me find eggs. But eggs were still a bottleneck. When volunteer Doug Anderson joined me to search a park outside Madison in early August, together we found about 50 eggs in several hours.
Learnng to breed butterflies
Because looking for eggs took so much time, I decided to try keeping captive butterflies in hopes they would lay eggs. I was able to capture a female I saw laying and placed her inside a large mosquito net in my living room. But she didn't lay eggs--all she did was try to escape. Now I understand that she fluttered so much because she was hungry--I didn't know how to feed her.
During March of 2016, there was a blizzard on the wintering grounds in Mexico, causing substantial mortality. Consequently, in early May, it was very hard to find eggs here. I was worried the monarchs were becoming too scarce for the program to depend on finding eggs. I realized I was going to have to breed monarchs.
Then
Dave Hogg, professor of entomology at the University of Wisconsin, asked me to take care of nine caterpillars
while he was out of town. The eggs had been found by his students
on May 2, the first day monarchs were seen in Wisconsin. Of the nine
caterpillars, eight became male butterflies, and one a female. Bad luck!
What I had read about breeding was that you put the males and females together in a tent—rather obvious—but there wasn’t much additional information. How long do you wait for mating? How do you feed them? There was information on making “artificial flowers,” but little on how to get the butterflies to sip dilute honey from the flowers.
When the female and eight males showed little interest
in mating, I worried some more! But when I approached the tent three days after
putting the nine together, I saw a mated pair! There were three more days of
worry until the female began laying. Now I had a breeding program and all the
eggs I needed. I began adding places to show monarchs.
The kids and their parents were amazed. Sometimes I was mobbed, with up to 50 parents and kids clustered around. If I had a number of recently emerged adults, we’d go outside where the children released them one by one.
One day, responding to so much interest, I stayed without lunch for six hours. Sometimes we went out to look for eggs on the milkweeds that grow next to the library.
Through the
library, I was able to sign up many parents to raise monarchs at home, and I
found teachers who were interested in participating.
In June and
July of 2016, I recruited about 50 families. I provided about 10 eggs to each
family, asking them to return most of the chrysalids to me for programs while
keeping a few for themselves. But with the ease of getting eggs, plus some new efficiencies
in rearing monarchs, I was able to raise enough monarchs myself for summer
programs, supplemented by monarchs supplied by a few experienced volunteers. I
never called on most of the family volunteers to provide chrysalids.
As the 2017 monarch season begins, I note differences from last spring. At first, reports on Journey North indicated monarchs were returning much earlier than 2016, and indeed the first monarch in Wisconsin was reported at Pleasant Valley Conservancy on April 23. But then north winds for several weeks stopped the influx of butterflies. No eggs were reported in Madison until Liz McBride found 7 eggs in her garden on May 17. Bonnie Wiesel reported a laying female and eggs the same day, but I didn’t find eggs myself until 5/24. In early May, I went to Pleasant Valley Conservancy three times, looking for both eggs and females, but no luck. So when the Monarchs for Kids breeding program starts, it has to be flexible.
Adding more schools to the program
At the library, I was able to meet teachers and offered to provide monarchs for their classrooms. They were eager to participate. Some knew how to raise caterpillars, but others had no experience. I realized I need to provide workshops for teachers, which I offered at both the library--for 3 hours, and later at my home for two hours. Up to 30 teachers attended. For the longer workshops I included an hour about the basic biology of insects, later dropping that part.
The workshops showed the various stages of monarchs, the equipment, and how everything is done--such as transferring tiny caterpillars to fresh milkweed. I had teachers do the transfers themselves. I sold at cost some of the basic equipment, including mesh cubes, floral tubes, small containers for holding a few caterpillars, and bins.
I showed monarchs to kids at a number of summer festivals: One by the Clean Lakes Alliance, Monroe Street Days, Olbrich Gardens butterfly day, evening enrichment classes at the Wingra Boat House, Catholic Multicultural Center events, The Children's Museum, and many others. Since raising caterpillars and chrysalids for events eventually produced many butterflies, I saved the butterflies (while feeding them) for large releases.
I performed one large release of about a hundred butterflies from a walk-in tent pitched along the SW Bikeway, which coincided with an event put on by the Dudgeon-Monroe Neighborhood Association. Bikers stopped in droves, amazed to see the butterflies there. People went inside the tent to feed the butterflies, using Q-Tips dipped in honey water. We finally released them all at once by tipping over the tent.
I've been to the monarch wintering grounds in Mexico three times. That's an amazing experience. I met with teachers there, bringing them art work and posters made by students in Madison. They sent their own art back to Madison.
Refinements
I continued to refine the program, streamlining the methods, adding more schools.
I learned how to harvest milkweed seeds, germinate them, and raise the seedlings. I sold seedlings at the Monroe Street Farmer's Market for several years (while providing hands-on for kids), and distributed them free to neighbors. Liz McBride and I produced a hand-out on harvesting seeds and growing seedlings.
In 2022, the Friends of Lake Wingra received a grant to offer the program to more schools--allowing us to provide free equipment for schools. I learned to test for the OE parasite; Karen Oberhauser approved our methods (housing a single caterpillar per container). Each year I have added more fact sheets and improvements to the method.
Maximizing conservation
As the monarch populations continue to decline, I'm looking for way to enhance the conservation message in classrooms.
At the same time, we need to minimize our impact on the wild population. This means, for producing eggs, taking as few wild monarchs as possible. I believe it may soon be possible each summer to take only 20 eggs from the wild, or only two females.
By improving the teaching of conservation, increasing the efficiency of raising monarchs, and minimizing the removal of wild butterflies, I hope scientists will continue to accept our program despite continued declines of monarchs. Education is the only hope for reversing the decline.