May 24th 2019

Holy Crow, EGGS!!! So Many Eggs!!!

Today I brought in… wait for it… THIRTY-FIVE eggs! I am so excited I have been doing little whirling dances around the yard.

This is what a Monarch Egg looks like, right after a female butterfly lays it on a Milkweed plant:

See the little white dot? That’s an egg.

       Here’s another:         

Of course, they’re not always so easy to spot. 

See this one?    

No? Let me help:

Sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference between an egg and a bit of white Milkweed sap that has oozed out where a Milkweed Bug (more on them later) may have bitten the plant. Below, the white spot just to the left of the stem is Milkweed sap, and the white spot a bit out to the right of the stem is a Monarch egg:

The key is to check the shape. Milkweed sap will be flat, but Monarch eggs are egg-shaped with a bit of a point on the top. Check out the egg shape here:

Pointy!

I don’t accidentally bring in bits of sap anymore, but I brought in plenty when I was first raising Monarchs. Very disappointing, that. It’s terribly difficult to get sap to hatch.