I don't recall ever finding Black Swallowtail cats this late before, but I found 2 late instar and 6 small ones (only a few days old) on the rue 2 days ago. I'm assuming that they were out there when we had temps one night in the twenties, so they must be pretty resilient. Even though our temps are supposed to be in the sixties and low seventies for the next 10 days with night temps in the forties and low fifties, I brought the cats inside anyway. I hadn't even expected to find cats this late and wasn't thinking about looking for any, but I saw a big cat crawling on the ground beside the rue (I assume that it was hunting a place to pupate), so then my son and I checked the rue and found another big one and 6 small ones. I hope that we found all that were out there. Despite our having temps in the twenties recently, the rue looks fine, so I'm just going to bring it in as I need it because I think it would take a bunch of pretty hard freezes to do it in, so I'm sure I'll have a supply to feed the BST cats. If you haven't checked your plants lately, go check them and you might find some cats too.

Cathy