How to Grow Papilio Machaon at Home and Send Them Free

In this guild we will learn how to grow the Papilio machaon butterfly at home in the middle east.

This project is something i did as a kid a lot, the garden around my house use the have the Ruta chalepensis plant in abundance, which the insect really love.

First, you need to identify the Ruta chalepensis plant around your area, or even go and but it at a local plant store.

Once this plant is at your house garden or window, wait for around September and October, at this time the full grown butterfly lays it's eggs on the bottom of the plan leaves.

If you find small yellow eggs on the plant move them carefully to the container that you have, make sure it's clear one.

You will need to make some air holes on the to of the container.

Collect some leaves from the Ruta plant, it's the only one that this insect eats, put the branches you collected inside the container alongside the leaves with the eggs.

After few days, the eggs will hatch.

The caterpillars are small around 1 cm in length, make sure you have enough leaves to feed them (They east much more then you think).

Clean the container regularly and make sure the container is ventilated and fresh.

Now the caterpillar is pretty big, around 4cm in length.

Same as Step 2, keep the container clean, fresh and ventilated.

After the caterpillar reach diameter around 5-7 cm it will try to find a good spot to create it's cocoon.

At first look it will look like the caterpillar is dead (to of the image), let it rest, it is trying to create the cocoon right now.

As you can see at the bottom of the image, the cocoon is a green capsule that the caterpillar is turning into butterflie inside.

Clean the container and make sure it's well ventilated.

Now we wait.

After few weeks the butterfly will exit it's cocoon.

At first the butterfly is week, DO NOT HELP HIM TO OPEN THE COCOON! it will damage it's wings and will cause him not to be able to fly.

Give the butterfly it's time.

After few hours the butterfly will stretch it's and will be ready for a flight.

All there is to do is to take the butterfly outside, leave it on the Ruta plant and give it the time it needs.

After few minutes it will fly to continue the circle.