Anyone?

I was hoping one of our experts would show up. I have caterpillars of all sizes being taken by bugs, wasps, birds, you name it. The big ones, ready to pupate, are wandering quiet a distance and the chrysalis often show up in unusual places.

My experience is with 27 EB caterpillars on dill plants in a pot. I did not bring any of these cats inside as I was going to be away and had no one to feed them. I watched as all the eggs hatched and every cat grew big and fat. The dill plants were eaten down to a nub. The day before I was to leave, as I was watering, I noticed some of the cats making their way off the dill stubs and out of the pot. As I watched, they were making their way across the ground (bark mulch), I assumed to go pupate where none of the other cats could eat their chrysalis. I went about my watering. When I finished about 1.5 hours later all the cats were off the potted plant and there were 2 dead deflated cats on the mulch. The cats I had seen make it to the tall grass were no where to be found. Only one pupated cat was found on the screen of the screened porch. The next day it was gone. I think the 27 cats were perfectly camouflaged for 3 weeks while on the dill plant, and maybe even the smell from dill might deter some predators, but as soon as they crawled off the dill to go pupate they were spotted. I think every one of those 27 cats were eaten by various birds and insects in that 1.5 hours. The lone survivor was eaten the next day while incapacitated by pupation.

I hate to say it but your cats probably became food for birds and insects.

Anna

Thanks iris and anna. Yeah, I was thinking that too, anna. What a bummer. Maybe it's best that I don't attract them by growing their host plants so much out in the open? Maybe I should just stick to planting things in our messy fields full of weeds, where they might have a better chance. Sorry about yours! Thanks again.

Are you a vegan docmom? ;)

If they got big enough to pupate, they could be anywhere. I've never found one of their pupae on the hostplant.

If you are growing dill just for the caterpillars but are not going to raise the caterpillars, I suggest you get rid of the dill. Dill makes it easy for you and the predators to find the caterpillars. The caterpillars are safer on parsley and much safer on Golden Alexander.

Last year while visiting a caterpillar friend, I noticed she had a big, deep pot with parsley planted in it. The pot was about half full of dirt so the parsley barely reached the rim of the pot. The parsley was dripping with BST pillars. I'm guessing the pot was not an environment the regular BST predators wanted to hang out in. I used that observation to my advantage. Put curled parsley in a deep pot this year. Got a lot of pillars and eggs off of it.