Monarch butterflies get a little TLC at Kings County couple’s home | The Chronicle Herald

Monarch butterflies get a little TLC at Kings County couple’s home | The Chronicle Herald

BROOKLYN CORNER — A monarch maternity ward, complete with milkweed feeding stations, is in full swing in tiny Brooklyn Corner, Kings County.

Larry and Alison Bogan have been operating a monarch butterfly sanctuary in their basement for the past eight years, nursing the brightly coloured insects to life, tagging some and releasing them into the wild.

“We started finding caterpillars in a patch of milkweed plants in 2006 when we let the field go to wildflowers,” Larry Bogan said during a brief tour of his home and surrounding land Friday.

“The milkweed spreads by the root and kind of took over the field. The monarchs just know there’s milkweed here and they come.”

So begins the interesting life cycle of the monarch. In the spring and summer months, eggs are laid on the leaves of the milkweed plant.

These eggs hatch after four days, producing larvae (caterpillars) that feed on the leaves for about two weeks.

Then a little miracle happens. The caterpillars enclose themselves in a silky covering, attach to something solid and hang upside down. They are now in the pupal or chrysalis stage with an adult butterfly forming inside. The adult emerges after about two weeks.

“We first saw them on our garage in 2008 and we had 50 of them underneath the eaves,” Bogan said.

“Now we go and look for eggs, take the whole plant inside and start to raise them.”

A monarch butterfly will take its first outdoor flight after being raised in the basement. (GLEN PARKER)

In the fall, the monarchs leave on a journey that takes them as far as the mountains in southern Mexico, where they roost over the winter. Around March, they fly to Texas. Three or four generations later, the monarchs are back in Nova Scotia.

“There are lots of predators that eat the larvae, including earwigs, spiders and crickets,” Bogan said.

“Only one in 100 make it to the adult stage. We’re trying to bypass that statistic by keeping them inside.”

The complete life cycle takes about a month.

The Bogans work with an organization called Monarch Watch, based in Kansas. They help keep track of Nova Scotia monarchs and take part in a tagging program. The tags are small, numbered stickers that go under a butterfly wing.

If a monarch is captured or found dead, that number can be traced back to the Bogan nursery and will show when the insect was released and shed some light on the migration route.

“It’s a good organization,” Larry Bogan said.

The couple has noticed a decrease in monarch population over the last four years.

“Like everything else, they go in cycles,” Bogan said, “but it’s a bit alarming.”

The Bogans has had as many as 200 monarchs leave their sanctuary in one season.

That number has dwindled to as low as 30.

“This year has been a good one for us,” Larry Bogan said. “Our success rate is high. We had 12 butterflies come out in one day.”

The couple tagged 25 this year.

“We’ve been naturalists, so we just picked up on this,” Bogan said. “We enjoy all aspects of nature.

“This is a fun hobby, one we will continue. We want to see the monarch population go up. I hope we’re helping.”