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Comment by winslow | Hacker News Reader

I've been planting milkweed for monarchs. We just had 4 hatch today! Another 11 in their chrysalis and 12 hungry little caterpillars.

The biggest pest I've seen personally has been flies. Tanchid flies will lay their egg inside the caterpillar and the larve eats the caterpillars from the inside and they die. So we round up caterpillars we see on our outdoor plants and place them in a protected mesh enclosure with potted milkweed for them to eat.

In 2021 I successfully raised 81 monarch caterpillars to full grown butterflies. In 22/23 we still had some success but I didn't have a garden so we raised 10-20 wild ones. But 2024 we have a house now and a big garden full of milkweed!

Make sure to plant native milkweed in your area!

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I have a milkweed too. Last year it was kinda small since it was its 1st year but we had 5-6 monarch caterpillars, but gradually they disappeared 1 by one with no chrysalis I could find.

This year none yet, I was hoping the migration hadn't started, because my milk weed is giant and ready to raise these lil things if they would just show up.

They can travel a far way to setup their chrysalis. Though I've also found that when they disappear they tend to be dead from tanchid flies or something else.

Thanks for doing this. Although your comment also has me a little sad in that what once flourished by the millions now has to be nursed by the dozens.

Keep up the good work!

I've had a lot of earwigs preying on the eggs in the milkweed patch that I have.

Aren't flies also pollinators

Yes, and tanchid are an important fly. However, they don't seem to have much issue in regards to population etc. I'm not exterminating nor killing the flies just protecting the caterpillars. I still lose many caterpillars to the flies. In 2021 when I got 80 successful caterpillars I still had a ton that died from the flies. I was approximately 40% success rate with my caterpillars growing into butterflies the rest 60% died mostly due to the fly.

Thus far in 2024 I have 23 dead from flies. With my other 4 hatched, 11 chrysalis, 12 caterpillars that's 46% dead from flies (thus far) I suspect some of the 12 caterpillars are already gotten by the fly so roughly ~50% dead to the flies thus far.

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