That is a good question. The answer is not as clear cut as one would think. The standard answer is "no, they are in reproductive diapause". Meaning that as the day shortens, females that emerge from the chrysalis, do not mate and migrate to Mexico. However, some females during the earliest part of the migration, do mate and lay eggs. This has been documented in Texas. Whether this would happen in Indiana, I don't know. Probably not but you never know.

As the migration period progresses, females do not mate.

There have also been cases of monarchs in florida that break reproductive diapause when the encounter mexican milkweed (a. curassavica).

With the drought in Texas, I don't know what the fate of migrating monarchs will be.

-Elisabeth

Here is a link that might be useful: migration and diaupase

Bev,
this picture was taken Thursday evening, sep 1 in Minnesota. I also found new eggs friday sep 2 so I would keep checking!

{{gwi:540954}}

Lovely picture. My liatris is long gone, but I had two monarch's side by side on a sunflower, but they were gone before I got outside with my camera. I'll keep checking for eggs.

I witnessed two Monarch's laying eggs at Woodward Park today.

~Laura

Beautiful pic, Tony. Egg-laying is done in my garden, but it's going on in warmer locations in Massaschusetts, i.e. along the coast or in a warm micro-climate. My guess would be that some Monarch females would continue to lay eggs along the migratory route, as long as there were favorable weather conditions and adequate supplies of Asclepias plants. The reproductive female must have some innate intelligence to determine this.

Bananas, that is an interesting project at that link. I wonder if any Monarchs will be breeding in Texas this October with the terrible drought they have there.

Last year I planted a yellow Butterfly Weed plant. It has grown quite large. No flowers yet, but 3 days ago I noticed the leaves were mostly gone and counted 31 Monarch caterpillars. I took 12 to a friend who tags them, and kept watch on the rest. Yesterday, I picked 2 stems of a milk weed plant, put in a jar of water next to my plant since it appeared the caterpillars would be running out of leaves shortly. This morning I see that there are only 5 caterpillars left. WHERE COULD THE OTHER 14 HAVE GONE???
2 are busy munching on the new leaves and the others are finishing off the old leaves. I was so disappointed and curious as to what has become of the missing ones. Any ideas? I was hoping they'd be staying.
Pat

Pat;
I am not quite following the sequence of events you posted. However, lots, and lots of things can happen to monarch caterpillars. They can be eaten by a whole host of bugs, predatory stink bugs (of which there are several species), spiders, wasps, etc. They will even eat each other on occasion. If they were big enough and ran out of food, they will wander off and pupate.
-Elisabeth

Well, apparently I spoke too soon. Egg laying is NOT entirely over here - I found one lone Monarch egg on the Asclepias syriaca in the xeric garden this evening! I was only absent-mindedly checking the leaves, out of habit, more so than thinking there would actually be an egg.

Checked some of the other milkweed, and couldn't find any other eggs. One egg! How bizarre that I stumbled across it. If this egg makes it, the butterfly will eclose around October 1st. There are occasional migrants that pass through in early October, but it can get cold by then. Hopefully we will have a warm fall!

congratulations Terrene!

I wouldn't worry about the weather. Any lukewarm sunny day over 55 degrees should do the trick for a successful release.

Last year my final monarch eclosed Oct 3 and I saw a monarch nectaring on our Mexican sunflowers October 8! They are a little tougher than they look ;) Tony

I was wondering about this as well. We had an increase in monarchs a few days ago. I counted six or seven in the yard at a time which is a lot more than usual... at least here. I assume they were just migrating through. But then I saw them mating. A couple were locked together hanging off from grass flowers, swinging back and forth in the breeze for quite a while. How romantic! I didn't notice any egg laying behavior, or find any eggs. So it got me wondering how long after mating do they lay eggs?

{{gwi:540958}}

The weather has been so crazy with two days of mid nineties, then it barely hitting seventy today, and an even cooler forecast tomorrow. There definitely has been less activity since the temperature dropped.

Hi I'm in southern CA, this past Thursday I spotted a monarch flying around my milkweed. Sure enough it layed eggs, I originally counted four. I have been keeping watch on them and yesterday counted a total of eleven eggs. Then early this afternoon I saw a different Monarch, I believe as this was was much larger than the first. I saw that one laying eggs as well. So I am keeping my fingers crossed. I planted two seperate areas with tropical milkweeds two years ago and this is the first time, I have found eggs.

Like Elisabeth said; it happens in Texas.

Here is a link that might be useful: Worried...just found 12 baby monarch cats