As I announced yesterday, we put together a short YouTube video on the tagged monarch butterfly we saw yesterday at Terry Trueblood Recreation Area, with the help of another guy who pointed it out to us. This was a lot of fun because we didn’t know anything about the monarch tagging project.
The tagging project is just one part of a comprehensive educational and research program. One interesting section on bugs that feed on milkweed talks about milkweed beetles, but I didn’t find anything about milkweed bugs until I checked another site. It sounds like splitting hairs, but they’re not the same insect although they both feed on the milkweed, which the monarch larvae eat.
I got a photo of the milkweed bugs. Although the pile of them on the milkweed look like two different insects, the smaller ones are just younger versions of the same bug. I don’t think there were milkweed beetles on the milkweed plant I saw.
The other interesting thing is how to tell male from female monarchs. I’m not confident I can do that, although there is a video I posted yesterday (made by the Monarch Watch team) which tells you how to distinguish them.
We think the tagged monarch we saw might be a male, but I wouldn’t bet on it. We saw another monarch (which is featured in the video) which could be a female.
There is a fall open house at Kansas University West Campus in Lawrence, Kansas on Saturday, September 13, 2025.
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