🦋 When is it TOO LATE to Migrate❓🥶

Good Weekend Royal Raiser,

summer has returned to the bold north with 80’s, heat, and humidity. 🌞

This is perfect weather for migration-generation monarchs looking to fuel up before making the long migration south. 🦋 🇲🇽

This is the time of year when I start getting messages from people worried about the weather getting too cold for monarchs to migrate...should I mail caterpillars/chrysalises to butterfly friends in warmer regions? I have a definitive answer for you further down this newsletter ⬇️

As I’ve mentioned before, we are shutting down our raising supplies shop. At this point, I’ve finished moving over necessary content from the shopify store to the wordpress blog. This means we now have a shop shut down date coming up next week…

September SHOP Farewell 👋

Our shop is permanently shutting down on Wednesday, September 17th, 2025.

As you might have noticed, most of the supplies are sold out but you can still buy these supplies while the shop is still up ands running. We pay shipping on all shop orders $50+

1. Little hole lids ⬅️ only buy these IF you already own our ‘fat cat’ floral tubes ⬅️, which are almost sold out. These alternative lids are for thin-stemmed cuttings to prevent baby caterpillar drownings
   

2. Garden for Life Pollinator Garden Flags ⬅️ (20% OFF and a good gift idea for the upcoming holidays!)
   

3. Raising Butterfly and Milkweed Quickstart Guides ⬅️ (instant PDF downloads: save an extra 15% when you bundle with lids or flag)

Thank you for all your support over the past decade. 😍 Don’t worry, I’m not giving up on supporting monarchs and other beneficial pollinators and will still publish a newsletter and the monarch butterfly garden blog to help you achieve these goals.

Raising Report 

We currently still have 9 caterpillars and 6 chrysalides. I brought in one instar 2 this week, but not sure how thew count jumped from 13 to 15 total…for the first time in raise the migration history, I messed up the initial count or unknowingly brought in an extra cat❓ 🙃 I don’t normally count caterpillars brought in (during Raise The Migration) because they can be parasitized outdoors...since this last caterpillar was pretty small, hopefully it went undetected by flies.

The worrisome emails have already begun as we approach mid-September….is it too late for monarchs to migrate?

NOT Too Late to Migrate

Let me calm some frazzled nerves with these late-season facts:

1. In Minnesota, we’ve released monarchs through the first week of OCTOBER without issue

2. In Minnesota, I’ve seen monarchs still fluttering south (in Minnesota) during the last week of OCTOBER 🎃

3. There have been reports of monarchs entering the sanctuaries in Mexico as late as DECEMBER

4. Monarchs can fly hundreds of miles a day ⬅️ (if necessary)

5. Monarchs can fly in temps as low as 40’s, if there’s sun…I have witnessed this with my own eyes! 👀

So, at this point in time, there’s absolutely no reason to worry about whether monarchs can still migrate from your region. If it does get to cold, monarchs can serve the ecosystem in other ways as food for predators. If they all survived, you would not have a healthy ecosystem…raise a few, and raise them well!

For more information on how to give your final monarchs the best chance to join the migration:

How to Safely Release Monarch Butterflies ⬅️

I know some of you are still raising your migration generation butterflies…

If you've gone through the all raise the migration info, and released your final butterflies for 2025, please check out the following info...

Raise The Migration 2025- Share Your Experience! ✍️

This is an opportunity to post what you've learned this season, what raising challenges you faced, and anything new you'll be doing to improve your raising process in 2026.

You can fill out the comment box at the bottom of the linked page below.

Please do not post questions in the comment box as blog comments are not a good platform for ongoing discussions. This is specifically to share your 2025 raising experience including any helpful tips you think will benefit others in the community. Thanks in advance for sharing! 😊

You can share your experience here:

Share YOUR 2025 Raising Results and Experience ⬅️

Coming Soon?

In the next few weeks I will be adding my lessons learned to the Share Your Experience post…looks like early October this season!

Happy Raising 🌿🐛🦋🙌

Tony G