Our Insect Lore Painted Lady Butterflies

We have always enjoyed hatching butterflies around here as you can see in our monarch photo essay.

This spring, before the monarchs arrived, I grew impatient and ordered a painted lady butterfly hatching "kit" from Insect Lore.

We haven't been dissappointed at all!! We ordered the kit, which includes a great habitat we will use for other things, and a coupon to send away for 10 caterpillars.

The caterpillars arrived and we thought they were dead because they were not active like monarch caterpillars, but they all lived and all made a crysalis.

So far 6 of the ten butterflies have hatched---sadly, one will not be hatching because it was "lost" when Luke knocked over the habitat.

We have been feeding the butterflies with sugar water sprinkled on fresh carnations at the bottom of the habitat.

I can't wait when we have a butterfly release in a few days.

I also look forward to using this habitat for our monarch hatching. I love all the room we will have to observe our monarchs and all the other "creatures" we seem to collect over the summer.