Help! Milkweed Bugs demolishing my milkweeds

These suckers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_milkweed_bug are wreaking havoc on my milkweed plants. Is there some method to get rid of these things or at the very least decrease their numbers?. I am not opposed to chemicals but I don't want to kill the caterpillars and beneficial insects. I have been killing them one by one as I see them but that is not making much of a dent in their population :(

I had the same problem. Having grown parsley and getting parsley caterpillars and the beautiful butterflies they produced, I let milkweed that had been attempting to establish itself grow. I ended up with tons of those nasty orange and black things, which I had never seen on milkweeds on the trails near my house. Worse, if you let it establish itself it pops up everywhere - in lawns, ornamental grasses, and in rose beds. So this year I tore it all out. It's still appearing.

My advice, grow parsley instead. Fresh parsley is love in salads, and when it blooms in the 2nd year, instead of those nasty creatures you'll get these.

Donna, those are Black Swallowtail caterpillars. Parsley is one of the hosts for them. Dill, fennel and rue and others.

plexi, I keep an old margarine tub filled with soapy water out on the back porch. When I have time, I go over to the milkweed and the butterfly weed and hand pick off the milkweed bug, and toss it into the soapy water. Do you catch lightening bugs? It's no different having the milkweed bug in your hand then having a lightening bug. The caterpillars make the plant look worse than the milkweed bug does. Please don't use any chemicals, even now. I have caterpillars out there now, you wouldn't want to kill any of them. I also wouldn't get rid of the milkweed, unless you don't want to have a host plant for Monarch's anymore. Just my opinion.

Thank you, terryr, for reminding me of the name. Love those guys. I keep tons of parsley just for them (well, OK, I eat it too). It's just that the milkweed bugs swarmed all over the plants, horribly disfiguring them. If they had been the caterpillars, I would have tolerated them no matter how ugly they were.

I have dragonflies, two kinds of hummingbirds (in groups of 3 despite the fact that I put out no nectar!) and a variety of lovely butterflies. I wouldn't dream of using chemicals and harming my little visitors - they are a big reason why I garden.

Just watch out for the milkweed popping up where you may not want it. I removed it all last year, or so I thought, and have removed at least 40 plants this year, some in the lawn and perennial beds. But if your garden is more native than mine, that could work well for you.

I do think think that my monarchs are nectar, rather than host drawn.

Donna

You're welcome ;)
Have you tried planting butterfly weed?
http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/73/
I've had it for 5 yrs and I still have my original plants. Just a thought.

And a good thought. I have so many butterflies in my yard I didn't realize that I have, with only one exception, nectar vs. host plants. I have lots of verbena bonarienses, and they attract many lovely creatures with their nectar. I have only begun to seek out host plants. Butterfly weed may be the ticket!

Verbena bonanensis is a plant I'm not familiar with. If you love Verbena though, which I do, Verbena hastata, and Verbena stricta are 2 others that butterflies flock to. Both are hosts for the Common Buckeye and the Least Skipper. Just doing a search to see what else, I found your Verbena bonariensis! It's a host plant for the Common buckeye. I really like this site on butterflies and what their host plants and nectar plants are
http://www.gardenswithwings.com/identify-butterflies.html
You can click on gardening for butterflies then click on either host or nectar plants. That site is so much easier than the book I got! I just can't carry this laptop outside...lol...

Here is verbena b with it's fans.

Fun to watch them.

If I'm really lucky, I'll se them in3 different colors.

I can't make out what's in picture 1. Picture 2 looks like a Monarch? Picture 2 looks like a Black Swallowtail? I'm not sure what you get in 3 different colors? Or you mean you get 3 different kinds of Swallowtail?

The yellow ones - are they admirals?

Eastern Tiger Swallowtails?
http://www.gardenswithwings.com/butterfly/Eastern%20Tiger%20Swallowtail/index.html
Doing a search for a yellow Admiral, I only come up with one that's from Australia.
http://www.ozanimals.com/Insect/Yellow-Admiral-Butterfly/Vanessa/itea.html
There's a White Admiral, but it's usually called a Red-spotted Purple, which is what I know it by.
http://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/species?l=1785
Finally, is the Red Admiral. There might be a lot more that I'm just not aware of. That is a very strong possibility! I don't claim to be an expert on anything...lol....

Here's the Red Admiral on my buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis).

Oh, thank you - it's an Eastern Tiger butterfly. Please excuse my ignorance of the proper names. My husband referred to it as an Admiral and I absorbed the information without checking.

At any rate I think they are fond of most verbenas. It's just that I have a billion seedlings of verbena bonariensis, and with the combination of many plants in a purple shade, as well as a lot of nectar, I have the fun of watching hummingbirds, bumble bees and butterflies (the latter sometimes 20 at a time) come to my yard.

I am going to go to your website and educate myself. Thank you for your patience and your help!

Donna

You're welcome, Donna!

You're talking about the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, and guess what came into my yard today after the rain...lol....

Love those guys! What a beauty. Thank you for the great pics and the education. We got rain this morning, for a portion of the afternoon, and now it's pouring tonight YAY!!!!