FOR SALE, Black Swallowtail Butterfly pupae

Papilio polyxenes --  Black Swallowtail Butterfly pupae for sale.

Price:  $5.00 per pupa.  Please add $5.00 USPS shipping for your entire order, including any other species I am offering in my other ads (my other ads will all have the same posting date and no photo).   The email address in this ad is my PayPal email address.  Payment by check or money order is also possible for my regular customers.  U.S.A. orders only, please.  Please do not send money until I have confirmed your order. 

Both female and male pupae will be provided for each shipment, in about equal proportions.   The parents of these pupae were wild-collected in Iowa.  The larvae were reared on wild parsnip and parsley. 

These pupae are in diapause, so they can deal with whatever weather you will be having.  I recommend that you make a rodent-proof cage to protect the pupae and place them immediately in an outdoor location, so they can develop in synchrony with any wild population in your area.  Just get some steel hardware cloth at your local hardware store.  Make a cylinder and fold over the ends perpendicular to each other, making it large enough for the emerging butterflies to expand their wings.  Hang the cage outdoors where it gets only natural light, but not direct sun.  Hang it out of reach of strong critters like raccoons, out of easy sight of birds, and where you can check on it easily.  Transfer the pupae to a more suitable cage and bring indoors after the first butterfly emerges.  I will be offering eggs of this species off and on from early April to early August.  Release the butterflies outdoors only where they are native.

It is important to keep the pupae in a moderately humid environment if they are kept indoors.   If allowed to remain in typical household conditions, the pupae may yield adults with crumpled wings, due to desiccation.  If the pupae are held at room temperature, the butterflies will begin emerging in approximately two weeks.