I forgot to mention that I also FINALLY have pipevine swallowtail eggs and chrysalids in the screen room. The mamma always lays her eggs on my big Aristolochia elegans pipevine - along with all the polydamas swallowtails - but the caterpillars didn't survive until I collected the egg clusters and trimmed away all the toxic pipevine and placed the clusters on some leaves of my Aristolochia fimbriata. Yeah!

Sherrie

That's brilliant! I might have to try that myself. What do you do about all the poop that collects in the bags?

Yes, that is brilliant. Thank you for the tip.

If you live in a dry climate, I can see how bags would work out well. My bags currently sit unused (just using sleeves right now) because rain + frass = poopy mess in the bottom of rearing bags. I will say the 50 cents per bag price does make them attractive. I get a little peeved when a bird or yellow jacket makes a hole in the mesh of my $8 sleeves. And then there was the time some animal shredded my huge LiveMonarch.com bag.

KC

Poop and moisture are really not a problem. I keep a bottle of bleach outside in my work area and soak the used bags for a few minutes in a weak solution after I have shaken all the dry poop out. I rinse them well in clean water and they dry in minutes in the sun. The water from the sprinkler hits my many bags and it runs off almost like it was plastic. The cats have not suffered from it so far. As for the poop, I just untie the ribbon and give the bag a few little taps and the poop falls out without the cats having to leave their dinner. If the bag does seem to need changing, which they often do, I keep some clean bags with me and just put the cats in the new bag and attach it to a nice new branch with lots of leaves.

I must say though that especially monarchs eat LOTS and FAST as they're getting large, so I separate them and put only one cat per bag - then I have to watch them carefully so I don't let them run out of food. I take them into the enclosure when they get large.

The polydamas cats are a different story. There are SO MANY, and they eat SO MUCH that I couldn't keep up with them in bags. Now, I put them in the enclosure with lots of Aristolochia elegans clippings in an open plastic shoe box. It doesn't wilt before they eat it all up, even with it not being in water. If there are any blooms on the vine they especially love those! As they eat the clippings down, I put new clippings in a clean shoebox and just sort of lift the clippings that the cats are still feeding on in the old shoebox. I give them a little jiggle to remove any poop and put the whole shebang in the new box. As they mature they are allowed to crawl out of the shoebox and hunt their sweet spot to make their chrysalis.

Sherrie

This is so great! Right now I have two milkweed plants (3' and 4' tall) wrapped up in purple tulle! If these eggs hatch they will be my first monarch cats this year! I have several milkweed that are about 8' tall. No way I could wrap those if I did ever find eggs. (I'm the one who witnessed the hummingbird following the monarch and eating every egg she laid!)

I think I might hang a wasp trap from the milkweed itself! Those things are so darn thorough and persistent. Why oh why don't they eat the zillion carpenter ants all over my property?

That's wonderful that you've found a way to protect your cats - no type of sleeve has worked too well for me, but then I live in a humid climate, and the frass can get really nasty and even moldy very quickly. It's raining right now, so if I had bags on my trees, that would be nasty.
But I'm sure happy for you and your cats! And congrats on the pipevine swallowtail cats - I hope your A. fimbriata holds out!
Sherry

I was very fortunate today, finding GST eggs on my small wafer ash. But, since the tree is so small, my options are limited on feeding the cats. I figure there is no way I can be cutting leaves off the tree and have the tree live. I did not want to put a sock over the whole tree since one of the eggs had already been sucked dry and the predator was probably still on the tree. Then I remembered this topic. Took me a while to find it (SEARCH on here still stinks) but I eventually did. Gave my wife the info and sent her on a quest to the fabric store. She came back with a dozen 7" X 4" bags that have built-in draw strings. I wanted to be able to cover 3 leaves and these bags do the job.

Never ever thought I'd use the info posted in this topic but I was put in a unique position where this info was priceless. Thank you very much for posting this Sherrie.

KC