How to Get Started Selling Butterfly Eggs
Butterflies are not only beautiful insects, they serve a vital function in the ecosystem, using plants as food and pollinating them, as well as being a food source for predators. It is possible to make several thousand dollars a year by being a butterfly farmer, as butterfly farmer Sheri S. Moreau shows, but most sell eggs and mature butterflies as more of a hobby. To do this, you have to set yourself up with suppliers, prep your breeding, holding and rearing areas and take care of business aspects of butterfly farming like registering your business name.
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Things You'll Need
- Rearing boxes
- Shelves or tables
- Plants
- Sponges or spritzing bottles
- Heating lamps
- Liquid butterfly food
- Magnifiers for examining and locating eggs
- Sanitation equipment such as disinfectant sprays and wipes
- Sink
- Plant seeds for species such as milkweed
- Land
- Greenhouse (optional)
- Rearing room
- Holding room
- Shipping, packing and labeling materials
Instructions
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Go to your local library and conduct research as to the current market for each butterfly egg type, as well as what each species needs to thrive. The "Encyclopedia of Insects" by Vincent H. Resh is a good starting point. Choose the type and numbers of eggs you will sell based on your research results, as the results will determine your working space, supplies and where you get your initial eggs.
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Set up a rearing space with shelves or tables, rearing boxes, sanitation equipment like paper towels and disinfectants, fans, heating lamps, plants the caterpillars can eat, and spritzing bottles or sponges; depending on the design of the room and how -- if at all -- it is connected to your heating and cooling system, you may not need all these items to control the temperature and humidity. Your garage or a shed may work just fine, but you must be able to control the temperature in the rearing boxes, which should be somewhere between 75 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit, as well as the humidity, which needs to be somewhere around 88 percent.
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Design and prepare your holding space. This is a room in which you'll keep any mature butterflies you may want to sell in addition to your eggs. It should look like and have items similar to your rearing space, but instead of rearing boxes, you should have soft-side cages for the butterflies with feeders for liquid butterfly food. It should be about 10 degrees cooler than your rearing space. The size of the holding space varies based on the number of butterflies you want to hold and the size of the adult butterflies, which varies by species, but each adult must have enough room to fly freely in the cage.
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Cultivate land near your egg-selling location and sow plants known to attract butterflies, such as milkweed. (See Resources.) This will be your breeding space, so the more eggs you want to sell, the more land you'll need. It may take several seasons for your breeding space to stabilize if you need to treat the land or if you have issues such as a lack or excess of moisture, inclement weather and pests.
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Find reputable butterfly egg dealers from whom you can purchase your initial butterfly eggs. Some organizations provide free eggs in order to help specific butterfly populations increase, but you also can get them through websites like Butterflies Etc. (See Resources.) Your state's Department of Natural Resources and the Environmental Protection Agency also may be good sources to find vendors, as are local butterfly houses that operate for the community or in zoos.
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Check with your state licensing agency about what you need to do to sell the eggs legally. Regulations vary by jurisdiction. In some cases, you may just need to register with the licensing agency with a Doing Business As (DBA), or an assumed business name, but in other jurisdictions you may have to apply for licenses related to the sale of live organisms or animals.
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Set up your marketing materials for the butterfly eggs, including a website where people can order online. Buy the supplies you'll need to raise and transport your butterflies and eggs, such as rearing boxes.
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Purchase your eggs.
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Hatch the eggs and raise the caterpillars. Let the caterpillars form their chrysalises in controlled, large boxes, as birds and other predators can reduce the number of caterpillars that survive in the wild. Release the mature butterflies into your breeding space, keeping a few in your holding room as needed.
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Check your breeding area for butterfly eggs. Harvest the eggs you find and bring them back to your rearing space.
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Begin advertising once your butterfly supply has stabilized and is somewhat predictable. When you'll see eggs after you release your adults depends on the species. Adult butterflies in most species live just a week or two and lay their eggs just before dying, but others can live for as long as 18 months, says the University of Kentucky. The eggs usually look like cloudy droplets of water.
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Tips & Warnings
If you live in a cooler climate, you'll need a greenhouse -- or several -- as your breeding space if you intend to sell eggs year-round.
Expect eggs to be as high as $4.00 each, depending on where you get them. Other items like your rearing boxes can be constructed creatively for free out of items like old aquariums, so contact your local businesses to see what scraps they have. Depending on the efficiency of your space, lamps and other items may cost several hundred dollars.
References
Resources
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