These eggs are then placed on potted plants in smaller cages. The screened containers protect the eggs, and later the hatched larvae or caterpillars, from predators like wasps, ants, spiders and birds. Over the course of development, the larvae are transferred to new plants until they pupate ore cocoon. Generally, it takes one to two weeks before the insect will emerge from its chrysalis, as the butterfly cocoon is known. From The farm, they go to a London butterfly broker and then to the buyer.
Timing is critical.
If the package is late or lost in the mail, the butterflies will emerge and die. Environmentalists say operations like The Butterfly Farm are a last-ditch effort for species like the endangered homerus swallowtail in Jamaica, which is spectacularly colored and big enough to cover a dinner plate. An effort to reproduce the homerus in captivity, with assistance form The San Diego Zoological Society, begins later this year in The Blue Mountains of Jamaica and at Butterfly World in Florida. Even if the homerus project meets with success, as Brinckerhoff has with Costa Rican butterflies, there are difficult and perhaps intractable problems ahead.