You should collect the pair keep them in a cage and wait until there done then you should put the female in a lunch sack and have her lays eggs so you can raise them again you are so lucky all my Luna's died in there second instar it was horrible.:( hope you raise some:) what host plant do you raise them on?

I use sweet gum. It's all over my 5 1/2 acres of woods, and it stays fresh a long time in water, also whenever I've found luna cats in the wild, they've been on sweet gum.

I may put her in a paper bag, but they usually spill enough eggs in the cage for me to raise. I'll see - the big moths wear me out!

Sherry

Amazing! I haven't seen one in years. They are beautiful.

Sandy.

Yes, a beaut for certain! Please share more of this one.

SCG

Five more emerged this afternoon. It looks like three are males and two females, but I'm not positive, since a female luna's 'comb' is decent sized, not that much smaller than a male's.

All have the burgundy edging along the top of their forewings, disproving the old saw that says the burgundy edging shows they've overwintered. I KNOW these didn't overwinter! :)

Sherry

The last four emerged this afternoon, three males and one female. This batch has a lot of individuals with a LOT of yellow in them! One of today's males is cozying up with the female, even though they've just emerged. Females reportedly don't 'call' until around midnight, and I think that's true, since I've never found a pair mating before I went to bed. There have been four matings on my porch, one out of the cages and three inside them. I've got about ?50 eggs that the female from one caged pair laid on the bars, so I guess I'll raise them myself. It'll be quite a job! I only raised ?26 or 27 this time, and that wore me out, so I'm glad I'm down to the last female!

I'm not sure if all the matings occurred with wild males, some might have been from this same batch, 'don't know.

Here's the couple that's cozying up. You can see how yellow the male is -

{{gwi:525267}}

Sherry

Congrats and kudos for raising such beautiful creatures. Hope to see some of those yellow ones some day...

How beautiful, Sherri. I wish they were more common around here. Rare as hens teethâ¦

Just curious what your setup is. Do you have a screened porch, or is it more like a solarium with glass? Do you have cages inside it, and if so, do you leave the cage doors open after the butterflies eclose?

I have a large screened in porch in a shady location. I have my black swallowtails in a mesh cage, and currently I am raising my monarchs in plastic containers. I just take them outside to release them. The thought of letting them fly around free inside the porch never occurred to me. I don't think I would want to do it, but I can see how it would facilitate captive breeding.
Liz

Wow, they are beautiful. I have never seen one in the wild. Thanks for the pictures.

Liz, I raise all my butterflies and moths on my porch, which is covered, but not screened in - it's open on three sides. We live in the woods, so the porch is shady, and the cats don't get too hot. I raise the lunas in a big mesh cage on the porch - when they get big, I have to transfer some to another cage, and that's when I'm raising just a couple dozen, like I did this time. I put their sweetgum stems in left overs containers, and it takes up a lot of room.
When they emerge from their cocoons, I open the cage doors around 9:00 p.m. and leave it up to them. The males all leave sometime during the night, unless they mate with a female on the porch, in or out of a cage. Some females stay in the cages, some fly off into the woods, and some fly to parts of the porch, like the one in the picture. The mint green female in the picture directly above, next to the yellow male, left the cage and perched at about the same place the one in the first picture landed. Last night, about 10:00 or so, the last time I checked on them, the males were still in the cage, and she was on the ceiling. This morning I found her mated with a male, yellowy, but he could have been any of the three or a wild one or one that emerged a few days ago and flew off into the woods, but came back when he 'heard her calling', I don't know. They'll leave after it gets really dark tonight.
One of the females that stayed and mated in the second cage laid a lot of eggs (about 60?) on the bar of the cage, plus some in the mesh. I've retrieved the ones from the mesh, about 30, to raise myself. I think I'm going to find a good stand of sweetgum and tie the bar (I broke the cage down to clean it and replaced the 'eggy' bar with another one) to a branch. I want there to be a big canopy of leaves, where they can travel from one tree to another, with ample leaves available. I can't handle more than about 30 cats - they eat an incredible amount of leaves! Every time I raise lunas, at least one female leaves me some presents!

So you can see what the big cage looks like, here's a picture I took of it one year when a whole lot of lunas emerged on the same afternoon -

{{gwi:486466}}

Sherry

Very cool. I would love to see one in person one day.

SCG

Wow, that is a lot of work. Not even counting the work involved in providing food for all those babies. It doesn't seem very intelligent of the females to lay their eggs on inanimate objects. Why don't they fly off and lay their eggs on host plants? It must be awfully tricky to move the eggs off the mesh without crushing them. I am totally impressed with your efforts, Sherry. And I have this wonderful vision of you setting up an extension ladder with your bar, tying it up high in the canopy of a sweetgum somewhere in the woods!

It is disappointing that we so rarely see Lunas around here. It is very suburban and there is no really intact woods around. There is plenty of edge habitat and there are scraps of highly degraded woods, heavily infested with Oriental bittersweet and other vines. However, there are sweetgums. They are planted as street trees, and we have one in our backyard, a spindly thing in a little woodsy bed, surrounded by chokecherries, locusts, and other volunteers. My husband has seen them once or twice, usually dead or dying. Maybe it is partially because they are so nocturnal that we tend not to see them. Maybe they are here and we don't know it!

Anyway, my hat is off to you! Thank you for your efforts on behalf of a beautiful species.
Liz

I second everything that Liz said! Awesome work, Sherry, I would love to follow in your footsteps! Luna moths are so gorgeous... I would love to be able to raise one, let alone see one in person.

They're gorgeous moths, alright, Treeroots and Leafhead! The yellow ones remind me of the moon moths of Asia, their close relatives, of course.

Liz, I don't know why, but in a group of 20-30 lunas, there's always one female who lays eggs somewhere in the cage. Big moth eggs are very tough, but I I was still very careful when removing the eggs from the mesh. I enjoy raising them, but their appetites make the appetites of butterflies seem anorexic. I like sweetgum, because, in addition to being the tree I have found wild ones on, the old leaves stay in reasonably good shape all through the year, plus many of the trees continue to make spurts of new growth through the summer and fall, plus there's new growth on the root sprouts that are somewhat plentiful. The leaves on the trees have been there since early March - they're getting pretty old!

Sherry