The Queen

Similar, to monarchs, queens (Danaus gilippus thersippus) migrate in and out of the desert southwest. Unlike monarchs, queens can be abundantly common in the desert southwest of central to SE Arizona west to California.

Queens also feed on several species of milkweed. Queen caterpillars can be highly cannibalistic and require a certain degree of isolation when rearing. Click on any image to start slide show.

Rush milkweed (Asclepias subulata) is one of the more common desert milkweeds that support queens. This milkweed can be found growing as an ornamental plant in Phoenix, Tucson, and nearby subarbs. Courtesy interent photo.

Queen females deposit eggs near the blooms of rush milkweed. Leaves in the background are of another milkweed (Asclepias speciosa) which queens use in Utah. These leaves were placed in this photo simply for contrast purposes of photography.

This is a photo of one of many possible cages designed to get eggs out of a Queen female. Before caging her for eggs, make sure she is well fed. This page demonstrates how to feed live female butterflies. Place milkweed in bottles and place cage over the bottles. Expose females to filtered sunlight. (Venetian blinds or shady trees can create this effect.)

Newly hatched queen caterpillars are cannibalistic if they find other queen or monarch eggs. The best thing to do when your live female lays more than one egg (this is often the case) is to cut away the egg and place it individually into a small plastic container, like a solo or sweetheart cup, and wait for it to hatch. Then place it on fresh cuttings of milkweed in your rearing cage or bucket.

This particular variety of milkweed (Asclepias speciosa) looks drastically different to common milkweeds of SE Arizona. But, the principal is the same. To avoid cannibalism, separate caterpillars on leaves and blooms of milkweed cuttings in water and place in rearing bucket. Milkweed cuttings will only stay useable for about five days at which time you will need to replace it out again. The best way to move caterpillars from old plant to new plant is to cut around the caterpillar with scissors and place it on top of the new cuttings.

Once you have setup your milkweed bouquet and have placed your caterpillars on it, place that inside a rearing cage or a five gallon bucket with a screen lid.

It is important that your rearing setup has a screen lid in order to provide plenty of ventillation; not because the caterpillars need to breathe; but moreso because caterpillar droppings need to dry. (Otherwise caterpillars can get sick.)

Similar to a monarch, When a last instar queen caterpillar is through feeding, it will seek out a spot to form a chrysalis. It accomplishes this by attaching itself either to a leaf, stem, or elsewhere using silk to create what we call a cremaster. Once it sheds its skin, it will form its chrysalis.