What most people don't know is that the monarchs that they see anytime in the summer, which
might be July or August, are monarchs that are the descendants, the daughters or granddaughters
or grandsons or great-grandsons, of monarchs that have overwintered down in Mexico.
So if we want to think about the life cycle of monarchs, we could start with, well, let's
talk about fall migration because right now, here it is, it's September and the monarchs
are slowly bee-bopping their way down.
If you go up to the hawk watches and watching the hawks migrate and you're looking up in
the sky and you're watching these hawks fly by in the sharpshins and the broad wings and
the eagles, and then you'll be looking and you'll see this golden rods and vegetation.
You'll just see this monarch popping along and you're like, oh, hey, look how monarch.
But as you sit there all day watching the birds of prey fly by, you go, there goes another
monarch, there goes another monarch, there goes another monarch, and these monarchs are
bopping along and you notice that the monarchs are going the same directions as the birds
of prey.
They're going from north to south and you're like, oh my gosh, those monarchs are migrating.
And so it is so cool.
And they are here in Pennsylvania and they are going to flutter, fly, float all the way
down to Mexico, which is just phenomenal.
We are amazed at birds do these pole to pole migrations and you've got these butterflies.
These light things that weigh maybe a couple of grams, a pencap weighs more than they do.
And you're going to go all the way to Mexico and you're going to stop along the way and
get nectar from whatever plants are flowering, the golden rods, the asters, whatever is available.
And they're going to use the sugars and they're going to convert those to lipids for energy
to make it down to Mexico.
Conditions will change, things will warm up, they will increase and they will turn around
and head north and they actually won't mate until they start to head north.
And then they will start to reproduce in southern Texas and in Mexico, maybe southern Florida
and then they'll have a generation, they'll lay their eggs and they can go from egg to
adult and as little as 25 days, but it really is dependent upon the temperature, the warmer
temperatures, faster development.
So insects are very, very temperature dependent on terms of their rate of growth development.
And it's also going to depend upon the food quality.
So they'll have a one generation and then the next generation, they'll adults will merge
and they'll fly a little further north and hit the southern tier states and they'll reproduce
and lay eggs and then that generation will then spread up into the Midwest and to the
northeastern states.
So really, once they come into Pennsylvania, we could be seeing third generation monarchs
here and then there might be, there might be maybe two or three generations here before
they turn around and head back down south.
