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How to help the monarch butterfly

The monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus)  is one of our most iconic pollinators, known for its large size, bright orange color, and impressive fall migration to Mexico. Yet the monarch’s recent listing as endangered on the IUCN red list has led many to wonder what steps to take to help the monarch in their own yards. Read on to learn TPI’s advice to those looking to help monarchs and for a guide to noticing the different life stages of monarchs in your garden.

1. Plant milkweed

As caterpillars, monarch butterflies can only feed on milkweed (plants in the genus Asclepias), meaning these host plants are necessary for the monarch’s survival. There are several species of milkweed native to the northeast, including common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca), butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa), and swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata). Butterfly weed and swamp milkweed both perform well in  gardens – the former preferring dry soils and the latter preferring wetter soils – and can be found at most garden centers. Swamp milkweed also has shallower roots, which means it can grow well in a container if garden space is limited.

2. Plant nectar-rich flowers

Unlike the caterpillar stage, adult monarchs are not limited to milkweed and feed on a wide array of plants for nectar. These sugary resources extend their lifespan and give them the energy to fly farther and make more offspring. TPI has many resources to help you make your garden even more friendly for monarchs and other pollinators, including plant lists, a guide on how to leave swamp milkweed stems for bees and this blog post!

3. Don’t take eggs or caterpillars off of plants

Although it is tempting to take in any eggs or caterpillars you see to keep them safe and watch them grow, it can actually do more harm than good. Rearing large numbers of monarchs inside can increase the incidence of disease within the population. And, even worse, recent research has shown that monarchs reared indoors without natural environmental cues are less able to migrate south in the fall.  While raising monarchs can be a great educational experience, we recommend instead making a daily habit of watching the progress of the wild eggs and caterpillars you find in your garden (See below for our guide to finding monarchs in the garden!).

4. Don’t apply pesticides to your garden

Milkweed plants often become infested with tiny orange aphids (Aphis nerii). Do not worry–this is a totally natural occurrence and won’t hurt the monarchs. Aphid infestations can be unsightly but refrain from using pesticides as this will harm the monarch caterpillars. To remove aphids, use natural methods like a spray of soapy water. Natural predators such as ladybugs, lacewings, and their larva will also take care of the aphids!

How do you know if you have monarchs using your garden?

Monarchs are easy to spot as adults but we don’t see them as frequently as caterpillars. Here are some tips on identifying monarch presence in your garden:

Adults

Adult monarch butterflies are highly conspicuous–look for a big orange butterfly with black veins. They glide around with their wings held in a “V” and visit gardens to lay eggs on milkweed and drink nectar from flowers. Similar looking viceroy butterflies are smaller and hold their wings flat when they glide. Monarchs like a variety of garden flowers for nectar including purple coneflower, swamp milkweed, joe-pye weed, mexican sunflowers, and zinnias.

Eggs

Monarch eggs are sesame seed sized, a creamy white color, and slightly pointy–like a tiny hard boiled egg. These eggs are singly laid, meaning there is only one egg instead of a mass of many eggs. Monarchs tend to oviposit on the underside of leaves, but eggs can also be found on other parts of the plant, especially the flower heads. If you want to find eggs, patiently search the undersides of leaves and flower heads, especially focusing on the tallest areas of the milkweed, where monarchs tend to land. It may take a few days of checking before you see an egg, but don’t be discouraged! Even if you don’t see a monarch laying eggs on your plants, your garden may still have them–an adult monarch can lay an egg in under 5 seconds! Lastly, remember that although monarchs can start appearing in our region (MA) as early as the start of May, they are not widespread until late June, so time your searches for July-August if you want the best chance of success.

Caterpillars

Monarch caterpillars hatch in 3-5 days and eat their very first meal: their eggshell! These baby caterpillars are very small and difficult to spot. They are vulnerable at this stage to hungry insects like paper wasps. As they eat milkweed leaves, the caterpillars grow bigger and molt through stages called instars. You can tell a caterpillar’s approximate age by identifying its instar – monarch caterpillars go through five instars before pupating. Most of the caterpillars we find in the wild are small (in their first or second instars): due to the high rates of predation on these small stages, it’s less common to see large caterpillars.

While these small caterpillars can be difficult to spot, their feeding damage can be more apparent: it takes the form of small ‘windows’ into milkweed leaves, half-chewed holes often carved into a small circle, which the caterpillar uses to avoid drowning in the milky latex exuded by its host plant. If you see frass (caterpillar poop: poppy seed-sized brown pellets) or large missing chunks from the edges of the milkweed leaves, then be on the lookout: these are the telltale signs of a much larger stage 4 or 5 caterpillar! Be sure to check under the leaves, as caterpillars of all stages prefer to eat from beneath the leaf, where they are more sheltered.

Pupa

Monarch pupa are hard to spot as they blend into the surrounding environment. The 5th instar caterpillars tend to crawl away from the milkweed to pupate on nearby plants. They will remain in the pupa for 7-10 days before emerging as a beautiful monarch butterfly.

Have you found monarchs in your garden? Share your photos to @pollinatetufts!

Summer recap: a glimpse at pollinator fieldwork

The growing season is a busy time for pollinator scientists. Here’s what members of TPI got up to this summer! 

Cellophane bees

Nick, Leslie, and Lydia dug into the secret lives of solitary bees in New Hampshire. They want to know “where does a bee fly in her life?” To answer this, they caught and painted blueberry cellophane bees at nests to identify unique individuals. Then, they surveyed flowers and nesting areas to track daily movements. They painted over 1200 bees!

Bumble bees

Jessie, Lauren and Liana planted hundreds of goldenrod and sunflowers to find out how our growing practices affect the food available to bumble bees — an important native bee that pollinates tomatoes, peppers, melons and more. Bumble bees (like other bees) eat pollen and nectar, and need abundant, high-quality food to fly, pollinate, and raise new bees. They want to know how fertilizer and drought change plant growth, the number of flowers they produce, and the nutrient breakdown of their pollen and nectar. They spent the early summer digging, planting, weeding, and watering and ran a choice experiment to find out which plants bumble bees prefer to visit.

Baltimore checkerspots

Brendan spent the spring and summer studying the impact of the Junonia coenia Densovirus on Baltimore checkerspot population dynamics. He set up an enclosed experiment that exposes caterpillars to a gradient of viral loads and monitored the impact on their survival and reproduction. Later in the summer he continued field sampling for a project that is using a metagenomic approach to investigate whether Lepidopteran viruses are shared between co-occurring caterpillar species. This will help him understand the likelihood of disease spillover impacting species of conservation interest.

Honey bees

Isaac and Greta studied the effect that temperature stress has on the way honey bees arrange their comb stores. They hope to learn how increasing global temperatures will affect the structure of honey bee colonies.

Milkweed visitors

Atticus, Karen, and Kristina are looking at pollinator usage of milkweed in urban environments. Atticus and Karen observed monarch egg-laying behavior on milkweed, the monarch butterfly’s host plant, to see if it changes depending on surrounding landscape contexts, such as differing neighborhood flower garden densities. Kristina looked at milkweed flower visitors to see how visitation rates and species richness are affected by flower garden densities. You may have seen their pots at various park locations in Medford and Somerville!

Sweat bees

Chloé, Nick, and Aviel studied sweat bee (Agapostemon virescens) movement on Tufts’ campus. They want to know whether roads act as barriers to foraging bees. To answer this, they set up squares of four pots of coneflower bisected by roads at three sites on campus. At these sites, they caught and painted bees to identify unique individuals and recorded ongoing traffic.

Yellow-faced bumble bees

Across the country in California, Sylvie is studying the difference in life cycle patterns of Bombus vosnesenskii, the yellow faced bumble bee. Sylvie is interested in how life cycle timing of this bumble bee varies across its range. In the Sierras, B. vosnesenskii displays the characteristic timing of bumble bees – a queen emerges in spring, a colony grows over the summer with female workers, and at the end of the summer the queen stops producing workers and starts producing new queens and males. Then, the mated female queens overwinter underground! Sylvie is getting to discover firsthand the timing of Bombus vosnesenskii life cycle on the coast–and how it compares to timing in the mountains–since it has not yet been characterized! 

Pipevine swallowtails

James and Kaitlyn mated adult pipevine swallowtails and tested how growth rates in their offspring may be affected by differences in ambient temperature. These females laid eggs on Dutchman’s pipe and they collected those eggs to put in different thermal treatments. They will monitor those larvae until they’re ready to become adults themselves.

Monarch butterflies

Also in California, Emily studied monarch butterflies in urban gardens in the San Francisco Bay Area. Most people know monarchs for their impressive yearly migrations. Recently, however, year-round breeding ‘resident’ monarchs have also established in coastal cities in Northern California. These residents are associated with non-native milkweeds – namely Tropical Milkweed (Asclepias curassavica), which do not die off in the winter as the native species do and therefore provide breeding habitat throughout the year. We don’t yet know yet how resident and migratory monarchs interact with one another in urban gardens, and what the consequences of these interactions may be. In her research, Emily hopes to understand whether the resident monarchs in urban gardens are a population that is independent of the migratory one, or whether the presence of residents and their non-native host plants are contributing to overall monarch declines in the West.

Two-spotted longhorn bees love your vegetable garden

Two-spotted longhorn bees (Melissodes bimaculatus) love the city. This important crop pollinator is abundant in urban areas, and lucky for you, this highly distinctive bee is easy to identify. Read on to learn how to spot one in your garden (hint: look on squash and corn) and check out our field ID guide or this species profile on watchingbees.com for ID tips.

Range

Melissodes bimaculatus can be found across eastern North America, from Texas to Florida, but also as far west as the front range of Colorado. Populations occur to Minnesota and Maine.

Active Period

Two-spotted longhorn bees are active for about six weeks of the growing season—in Massachusetts, from late-June through early August—and produce one generation per year.

Appearance

Two-spotted longhorn bees are about 0.75-1x the size of a honey bee. Males are jet black, with long curly antennae, a cream-colored patch on their face, and thin white hind legs.

Female M. bimaculatus are larger and stockier than males, but with shorter antennae. They have thick brushes of white hairs on their hind legs for carrying pollen (though these hairs can be obscured by orange or yellow pollen). They also have two namesake white spots on the sides of their abdomen, though these spots are often hard to see. Females have have all black faces.

One lookalike to watch out for is the carpenter-mimic leaf-cutter bee (Megachile xylocopoides). This species is found only as far north as southern New Jersey. Females of this species carry pollen beneath their abdomens, not on their legs, and both sexes often hold their wings out at a 45˚ angle while foraging.

Male Behavior

In late-June, males emerge from the ground and patrol patches of flowers in search of females. Male M. bimaculatus are zippy; they speed through the garden, only stopping briefly to sip nectar or rest on a leaf. At night, males sleep on vegetation. They bite twigs or long blades of grass, often two to three feet off the ground, and hang on all night long with their mandibles. Males are highly faithful to particular sleeping perches, and will often sleep near other males. Maybe your garden is home to one of their adorable slumber parties!

Female Behavior

Females emerge shortly after males and get to work collecting pollen and nectar provisions for their solitary underground nests. Despite their abundance, two-spotted longhorn bees nest in obscurity; few nests have ever been documented. We suspect they nest in sparsely vegetated soils, such as those found on the margin of a garden bed. If you think you’ve found a nest, please reach out!

Floral preferences

The best way to spot M. bimaculatus is to spend time watching your garden in mid summer. Male and females drink nectar from a variety of common vegetable garden plants, including cucumbers, squash, black-eyed susans, oregano, cosmos, purple coneflowers, and zinnias. Females specially like visiting tubular flowers such as wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa), hoary vervain (Verbena stricta), and mountain mint (Pycnanthemum).

Females collect pollen from a staggering array of plants, including asters like black-eyed susans (Rudbeckia) and cosmos, pumpkins and zucchini (Cucurbita pepo), moss rose (Portulaca grandiflora), rose of sharon (Hibiscus syriaca), and morning glories (Ipomaea purpurea).

 In addition, while studying M. bimaculatus movement in urban gardens last year, TPI scientists noticed that this species has a curiously strong affinity for corn pollen (Zea mays). This was unexpected since corn flowers have evolved to disperse pollen on the wind, not via insects*. Corn pollen is dry and light, and the flowers produce no nectar, so we figured that M. bimaculatus must have been seeking out corn flowers for pollen. Upon a closer look, we saw a female actively packing corn pollen into her scopae, i.e. the thick hairs on her hind legs. We followed up on our observations by visiting local farms in the area growing corn. Sure enough, M. bimaculatus was on corn flowers in every single field.

This remarkable association between M. bimaculatus and corn raises many more questions than it answers. Corn is not native to eastern North America—though it has been grown here for thousands of years by native peoples—so which came first? Did M. bimaculatus arrive in this region following widespread trade of corn? Or did M. bimaculatus evolve a local preference for corn pollen since few other flower-visiting insects use this resource? Regardless, we encourage you to look for M. bimaculatus on corn flowers in your garden this year.

Share your findings on iNaturalist or comment on this post! Happy bee watching.

*By collecting pollen from tall male corn flowers, M. bimaculatus is a pollen thief, not a pollinator. M. bimaculatus is not a corn pollinator since it never visits the female flowers of corn plant (the silky ears lower down on the plant), which produce no pollen and offer no nectar.