10 Live Caterpillars for Butterfly Growing Kit - Refill Your Painted Lady Butterfly Kit with Live Caterpillars, Food, Instructions - Educational Science Kit

These turned out so great! We ordered 10 caterpillars and received 14! All are alive and well and have made it to the chrysalis phase! Thank you!!!!

These pictures are from the second batch of Painted Lady butterflies I purchased this year. Both sets contained a 6 or 7 caterpillars per container, and every crysalis, cocoon, produced a butterfly that emerged and was set free. I purchased a third set, and they are progressing well. I started doing this during COVID, and it was so meaningful. I sent my grandchildren kits so that they could enjoy watching life continue during challenging times. Each grandchild had these kits growing in their classrooms when COVID closed schools, and this allowed them to see from beginning to end, the process of caterpillars transforming into beautiful butterflies. I do this for myself, now. The grandchildren have grown and are busy, and I have the opportunity to watch these magical beings come to life and it is such a thrill to release them. I encourage everyone to give this a try. It’s a magical experience, you won’t regret! They are easy to do. I had a habitat for them from another vendor and continue using it. It takes a couple of weeks, and voila! You do need to feed them after they emerge, and instructions are included in each order. Give this a try! Kids or no kids, it’s a wonderful experience.

All the butterflies were delivered alive, and I only ordered 10 but got three extras! They did their chrysalises with ease, and had beautiful brightly-colored wings! Addie, age 12

I got 21 caterpillars instead of 15 and all of them are alive! Such a great company can’t wait to see how they turn out!

Totally worth it! I received 7 caterpillars of which all formed cocoons and 4 emerged as butterflies. The only thing I thought might be off is that the food media looked very dry. I'm not sure how much moisture these caterpillars need, so I added about 10mL of water which the media seemed to absorb very quickly and easily. I probably added another 50 or so over the next two days. This certainly didn't hurt. After a week or so they started forming random silk wisps. A couple days later I saw the first cocoons hanging from the lid. Another week when by and the butterflies started to wiggle free from their cocoons. When the first one emerged I opened the container and it flew out into my kitchen. I imagined a bucolic scene of having lovely butterflies flying free, dancing around in the air like fairies. The only practical concerns I had were making sure that the butterflies knew where to find its food in my big open kitchen and whether butterflies would leave butterfly poop on me, cooking surfaces, and my possessions. It turns out there were other concerns that I had not considered. I mixed up a sugar solution to feed my new butterfly. Then I looked around for the butterfly. I was worried that I might not be able to find it if it decided to land and rarely fly around. For some reason I had assumed that it would spend most of its time flying around like a prop from a Disney movie. But I didn't have to look long. Almost immediately I found it. It had flown to a sunny windowsill straight into the web of a giant spider the size of a peanut. When I got there the spider was just finishing injecting its paralyzing poison into the butterfly while grappling with it until it was still. Sorry. It's nature's way. The remaining three butterflies to emerge were not allowed to fly free.

I bought these for my class and they loved it! We got the caterpillars in the containers (I bought 2 sets) and there were several in each one, with all of the food needed to get them to the chrysalis stage. Once I opened the container and put the fabric from the inside of the lid up in the habitat, a few came detatched and had to lay on the bottom of the habitat. I wasn't sure how to reattach them, so I looked on Google and it said to just put them on a paper towel. They did metamorphosize, but wings were deformed and they couldn't fly. We even tried helping to straighten or fan out the wing, but to no avail... That's ok though, because once it "passed" we were able to use the wing under the microscope to look closely at the structure. I'll definitely buy these again, and will research some more about what to do for the ones that fall off.

So excited for my Painted Lady Butterflies, I've done this many times and it goes so wonderful.

The caterpillars were all alive when I received them and they are thriving I like that we got a little magnifying glass with our purchase so my daughter can observe her new little pets. She’s obsessed with it. It was a great purchase. The caterpillars were packaged well, but the shipment was not very good. Had nothing to do with the seller.