Insect Lore Two Cups of Live Caterpillars - 10 Live Painted Lady Caterpillars with Food - Includes Bonus Butterfly Life Cycle Figurines - Refill for Butterfly Garden Habitat

This is a wonderful learning experience and great Easter tradition for all my grandkids. All 10 caterpillars survived and flourished into beautiful butterflies, that we released on Easter day.

Caterpillars ate and grew and turned into butterflies. Great experience for my students.

I get these every year and they are so much fun to do!

I have been ordering from this company for years and for the first few years we would get a cup of 5 caterpillars that would result in 4-5 butterflies. My daughter loved this experience. However, the last two years we've been getting cups of 5 that only yield 1-2 butterflies and sometimes those butterflies have damaged wings. I'm not sure what has happened in the last few years but my daughter cries so hard when they come out like this and when more than half don't come out anymore. InsectLore does have a 3-5 butterfly guarantee and honors that by sending a new cup if you provide pictures of the results, but my daughter is so sad at this point that we won't be ordering anymore from this company.

The caterpillars come in a cup that you are not supposed to open lest their food get moldy or whatever. They spin a web so it quickly gets hard to see clearly to observe them. They grow very quickly and from the time of delivery to emerging as butterflies only took 20 days. It says you can release them unless in certain states. But ours all fly upside down despite following directions carefully and seemingly no issues during development. I even give them my room cleared out and set up to be butterfly friendly(no dangers or places to get stuck etc) to practice and set up a feeding station of various flowers and "nectar" mixes for them. They refused the sugar water mix the instructions told us to make so after a bunch of research I tried a few kinds including the sports drink/water combo and they really seemed to love the orange and blue ones. it's been a week now and they still are having trouble flying. I do keep them in the netted cage(bought separately) when i go to bed lest they get squashed middle of the night, but they have free flying room other than that. Someone suggested it may be because of inter breeding so much that they have development problems of some sort but I can't say for sure as they do not provide any information as to where these caterpillars came from. It has been a phenomenal experience with the kids to watch these wonderful creations God designed. Did you know they pretty much turn into a caterpillar soup in the chrysalis and then reconstruct themselves from that into butterflies? Also glad they warned us about the meconium in instructions. It really does look like blood. The little models of the 4 stages were a huge hit with my little guy. I definitely recommend having this experience, though I would be prepared to care for them their whole several weeks of life in case yours also have trouble flying and cannot be released. Still a fantastic experience to witness

Typically this is a great experience. I have been ordering caterpillars for years and have had no issues. This time, one caterpillar in each cup never got any bigger and i had to release them so they didn't mess with the other 4 that went into their chrysalis. I was expecting that all 8 butterflies would have hatched over the weekend, but when I got to my classroom this morning, it looks like 4 (all on one of the lids) are almost black and i think they died. I have NEVER had this happen and I, along with my class) are really disappointed. Hopefully next year it will be better.

Arrived fast and secured.

I have been looking for 3D models of each part of the life cycle since I started teaching 2nd grade. These are perfect! They are very functional and educational because the students can manipulate them in their hands since they cannot touch the live caterpillars. They will love how fun that is! Unfortunately, we only received 2 live larvae. It looks like there may have been 2 others but they were so tiny and shriveled up that it looked like the other two’s excrement. My school orders these every year for our 9 classrooms and never has any issues with the live larvae. They do order directly from Insect Lore. My son decided that he wanted to raise butterflies this summer so it was disappointing to only get 2 caterpillars when we were expecting 5. Next time, I’ll order directly from the company. We also want to try the praying mantises next time!

I thought caterpillars would have been great to see their stages of development. Unfortunately the perishable package was opened by CBSA and the containers with caterpillars were disturbed and they died. I will not reorder.

All painted lady caterpillars arrived Alive although one jar only had 4 not 5 as mentioned in the description

I ordered 10 caterpillars, however, only 6 out of 10 made it into Chrysalis form and 3 have fell from the top of the lid attempting to latch. Now I have 3 laying on the ground of the habitat and 3 that have managed to properly latch to the lid. Because they took so long to arrive 4 died attempting to chrysalis because the box did not create the still, fragile transport that would have been required for them to latch to the top of the lid of the cup. I am hoping the 6 remaining chrysalises survive and can still hatch properly. My complaint is that they were already out of the caterpillar stage upon arrival. Timing is everything with getting to properly experience this and have it work out.