Feeding Butterflies

[joachim]

everyone,

I'm currently raising Papilio glaucus butterflies. I need a tip on how to feed the adults. I have honey, sugar and water available.

Thanks in advance,
Joachim

[adamcotton]

Joachim,

Don't use sugar, it can cause problems in the butterfly gut. Mix 10% honey solution and add a tiny amount of salt.

I assume you will want to hand feed the butterflies, rather than them flying around in a 'flight cage' or greenhouse. If so, prepare a small container with honey solution soaking a tissue or sponge, hold the butterfly with wings closed and place its feet on the edge of the container. Then use a pin/needle to gently unroll the proboscis and move the tip into the honey solution. The butterfly should start to feed once its proboscis comes into contact with the liquid.

If they are flying around in a cage you can make a fake flower (red colour is best) from the bottom half of a plastic bottle. Put sponge cut into chunks in the middle and pour in the honey solution and hang it in the cage.
Here's one I made:

artificial feeder mark 3 close-up.jpg (47.07 KiB) Viewed 3564 times

Adam.

[bobw]

I don't like using honey - way too sticky, and as Adam said, ordinary granulated sugar can casue problms in the gut. I always use fructose - pure fruit sugar, here it's available from all supermarkets.

[wollastoni]

Joachim,

Don't use sugar, it can cause problems in the butterfly gut. Mix 10% honey solution and add a tiny amount of salt.

I assume you will want to hand feed the butterflies, rather than them flying around in a 'flight cage' or greenhouse. If so, prepare a small container with honey solution soaking a tissue or sponge, hold the butterfly with wings closed and place its feet on the edge of the container. Then use a pin/needle to gently unroll the proboscis and move the tip into the honey solution. The butterfly should start to feed once its proboscis comes into contact with the liquid.

If they are flying around in a cage you can make a fake flower (red colour is best) from the bottom half of a plastic bottle. Put sponge cut into chunks in the middle and pour in the honey solution and hang it in the cage.
Here's one I made:
artificial feeder mark 3 close-up.jpg

Adam.

I like this fake flower.
Did you try it on the field in the jungle ?
From my experience, flowers are very rare in the jungle and I guess that several fake flowers like that could attract butterflies to "check" them. I am sure it could work with Delias. I need to prepare few of them before my trip to Japen in September...

[adamcotton]

No, I never tried to use a fake flower in the forest. The main problem would be that it hangs from wires (you can see them in the photo), and that would make it rather difficult to net anything. If the fake flower was placed on the ground it would very quickly get overrun by ants. Even in my cages I used to put grease on the top of the wire hanger to stop ants from crawling down to the 'flower'.

Adam.

[Chuck]

Short answer: I think you'll have to hand feed them, and hand pair them if that's your plan.


Long answer:

I've been to dozens of butterfly zoos wordwide, and I can't recall ever seeing a papilio on fake flowers or fruit. Morphos and Nymphalids yes, but not Papilio. I don't think they will take to it.

If your plan is to breed them, I think you'll have to hand pair them. I've brought Papilio (glaucus, troilus, polyxenes) into the house and all they do is try to get to the windows to get out; not the slightest interest in copulating.

AFTER hand pairing, a female might lay eggs on a host plant in a flight cage; I've never tried it.

Both Scriber and Perlman have raised thousands for breeding experiments; I presume they hand paired, how else to get so many? I don't know if they fed them, I don't recall reading anything about that. But you could reach out to them for advise.

I could catch a female and bring her home, but then what? I don't have a flight cage anymore and I think my wife would kill me, she puts up with enough.

[adamcotton]

... but not Papilio. I don't think they will take to it.

They certainly went for my fake flowers without any problems. Sorry I don't have any photos of them feeding on the fake flowers.

Of course Papilios won't feed at fruit.

Adam.

[Chuck]

... but not Papilio. I don't think they will take to it.

They certainly went for my fake flowers without any problems. Sorry I don't have any photos of them feeding on the fake flowers.

Adam.

Was this in a flight cage or outdoors?

[adamcotton]

In all my flight cages, size approximately 3x5 m by 2.5m high. I had 12 cages when I was running my farm.

I suppose different butterfly species may be more or less attracted, but all the Papilio species I bred were happy to feed from them.

Adam.

[papiliotheona]

I manually feed everything--hold the butterfly by closed wings with your left hand, with your right unfurl the proboscis w/insect pin into the solution.

I use one part honey, three parts punch flavor (the original, not low-cal or zero sugar) Gatorade.

For tiny things like lycaenids that you can't safely hold, I put a small blooming cutting of Baccharis in their small cage with them.