I’m on the monarch migration path and had wild milkweeds with monarch butterflies for a few years but the last 2-3 years oleander aphids exploded in population and I’ve seen a single caterpillar since.
Are there ways to mitigate that while not killing the monarchs or am I just shit out of luck?
The ones available online are from the western U.S.; depending on where you live, that may be counterproductive to the locally native species that are struggling.
Grow some yarrow, dill, or sunflowers and get ladybugs to lay their eggs all over your garden naturally, and I imagine you'll start to see much better results! Larval stage ladybugs are significantly more ravenous than their adult forms.
Wild stuff, thank you! I've got quite a few monarch fans to send this to now...
A lot comes up when you search for the BluMorpho tags. Some random links:
https://celltracktech.com/pages/blumorpho
https://monarchresearch.org/news-and-events/monarch-research...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/track-monarch-b...
https://www.opb.org/article/2026/09/21/pacific-northwest-mon...
A little pdf guide: https://westernmonarchcount.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/M...
Looks like there is an app you can download too that can do stuff like scanning for tags nearby.
Thank you - the tracker they use weighs in at 60 milligrams, incredibly light.
I've moved some of those links to the toptext. Thanks!
The site looks like it got hugged to death.
I’m on the monarch migration path and had wild milkweeds with monarch butterflies for a few years but the last 2-3 years oleander aphids exploded in population and I’ve seen a single caterpillar since.
Are there ways to mitigate that while not killing the monarchs or am I just shit out of luck?
I've replaced the top link with a different URL that's currently responding, and moved the submitted URL (https://blog.cwf-fcf.org/index.php/en/tiny-tracking-tags-for...) to the toptext. Thanks!
I release ladybugs every year and that seems to help. You can buy them online if they are hard to find locally.
The ones available online are from the western U.S.; depending on where you live, that may be counterproductive to the locally native species that are struggling.
Grow some yarrow, dill, or sunflowers and get ladybugs to lay their eggs all over your garden naturally, and I imagine you'll start to see much better results! Larval stage ladybugs are significantly more ravenous than their adult forms.
It’s amazing that they can cross Lake Michigan without stopping. It looks like 60-70 miles. What a cool project.