Naturalists' Worksite

The year 2023 had a slow start for Monarchs in Nova Scotia, probably due to the cool weather of the late spring and early summer. Very few Monarch had made it to province before mid-July. We saw the first Monarch in our field at Brooklyn Corner, Kings County on the 14th of July and found the first eggs layed the very next day. More Monarchs [...] Read more

2022 was a very good year for Monarch breeding in the Annapolis Valley. The following information is for just the Common milkweed field (2 ha) in Brooklyn Corner, N.S. Other people in the Annapolis Valley are also seeing good succcess in the number of Monarchs. A summary of the number of Monarch butterflies seen during this summer is: Over 100 [...] Read more

The first Monarch butterflies arrived in our field of milkweed in 2021 on the 6th of June. Not only were they early, there were three of them at the beginng. Soon more joined them and by the 18th we found our first egg in the field. There was a caterpillar on the 22nd of June. Counts of Monachs seen in the field were done semi-regularly. and as of [...] Read more

Jerry Lockett has created a fine video presentation of what Alison and I do for Monarchs in our 2 hectare field every year. It has some Monarch biology and descriptions of how to manage a field of Common Milkweed for good production of Monarch populations each year. Go to https://vimeo.com/448650247 The video is 13 minutes long. - Larry Bogan

In 2020 the International Monarch Monitoring Blitz occured from July 24 to August 2. This is not the end of the Monarch monitoring for 2020 but the results will give you an idea of the progress of the Monarch breeding this year. As of Auguat 3, I had monitored 20 sites in the Annapolis Valley and reported them to Mission-Monarch.org. I found [...] Read more

by Larry and Alison Bogan This year was an excellent year for the population of Monarchs although not as great as 2018 which was the best in our experience. Our 2 ha field is full of Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) and this year was sprouting by mid-May. It is a perennial and its roots over-winter. The damp spring helped growth and by the time [...] Read more

Over the winter 2018-19, one of the few remaining pine forests on the Annapolis Valley floor was clear cut of every tree standing. The image below shows how there is no forest left at all (click on the photo for a larger image). The area is shown in the aerial photo from Google Earth below before it was cut. The blue in the aerial images is the [...] Read more

The first Monarch butterfly probably visited our milkweed field around June 12, 2018 and layed at least one egg. We found the caterpillar of that egg after we saw two Monarchs arrive on 3 July 2018. Within a week we had about 10 Monarchs resident in the field. After that collection of eggs and larvae begain and we established our feeding and [...] Read more

Monarchs were first seen in Nova Scotia in mid-June and arrived in Brooklyn Corner late in the month. We had four in the milkweed field on the 3rd of July and collected our first eggs on the 4th. In the following months we raised 187 adult Monarchs from egg and larvae found in the field. We again tagged 50 of those butterflies hoping some make it [...] Read more

The success of any one year for rearing adult Monarch butterflies very much depends on the arrival of adult female Monarchs from the south and to have them lay eggs in our milkweed patch. In 2015 we had one female visit but this year we had two females arrive and on 12 July. There may have been a third female join them later. A male Monarch had [...] Read more