100 monarch butterflies and counting added to hurting population

There’s a monarch butterfly factory in Loysville, Perry County. The Zendt family – dad Jarret, mom Kayla and 3-year-old daughter Kennedy – are closing in on a hundred monarchs raised and released this year. (Their 6-month-old son and brother, Edward, is too young to join in the fun this year.) They hit the 75 mark of monarchs raised from egg to fully developed, winged adult last week, with another 15 in the chrysalis stage, developing from caterpillar into adult, and 30 more in the caterpillar stage.

In the eastern U.S. and Canada, monarch butterflies pass through 3 or 4 generations through the summer. The last of those generations make the flight south to Mexico, winter there and then begin the return flight to the north the following spring. That northward flight is a multi-generational migration, and the monarchs that arrive back in Pennsylvania in late spring as later generations from those that leave here in the fall.

Each monarch generation passes through four stages: about 4 days in the egg, about 2 weeks as a caterpillar, about 10 days in the chrysalis and then 2-6 weeks as a winged, adult butterfly. The final generation each summer, the adult that makes the flight to Mexico, lives much longer than 2-6 weeks, surviving from late summer through the following spring.

While summer 2018 may be shaping up as a strong season for monarch production in many parts of the eastern U.S. and southern Canada, the species famous for its annual migrations remains a species under threat. The number of monarch butterflies spending last winter in Mexican forests north of Mexico City, where all the monarchs from the eastern U.S. winter, declined for a second consecutive year, according to Alejandro Del Mazo, Mexico's commissioner for protected areas.


https://www.pennlive.com/wildaboutpa/2018/09/100_monarch_butterflies_and_co.html