How to Make Butterfly Food

Video Transcript

"When you're making butterfly food, you have to keep in mind that butterflies feed on many things in nature. Pretty much, flowers and nectar, or rotting fruit. So they're actually after sugar. And, you can make that a simple, cheap way, by getting table sugar and water and doing it as a one to ten solution, which is one ounce of sugar to ten ounces of water. Some people will use Gatorade and dilute it a little bit with water, for extra nutritional value. And if you wanted to feed them fruit, you could get bananas and let them get overripe and to the point where you wouldn't want to touch them, or maybe to the point where you'd be making banana bread with them, because they need it to be drinkable, so they want it to break down and for the sugars to be really, really out there. Some butterflies actually, typically the males in the world, you'll see them doing what's called "puddling", which is landing on the ground and drinking moisture from the ground. They're actually picking up salts and other compounds out of the soil, and it's typically by the river, where it would be deposited in nature. That would be harder to reproduce, but some people will pee on the ground, and they'll pick it up from urine. They'll also go after frass, and feces, but the best way to do it would be to just make sugar water. Pretty much all butterflies will drink sugar water. You would also need to have some kind of a pad for them to sit on. You could use a paper towel, or you could use like a pot scrubber, something like that, that they can land on without getting stuck in the water. And then another issue you would have if you were to put food out for a butterfly is that, unfortunately, bees and ants also like the same thing as butterflies do. So if you were to put a feeder out, you would maybe put it in something with a little well of water around it, like fill a bucket up with some water and then put another bucket inside of that with rocks, so that the ants wouldn't be able to figure out where the sugar water is. With rotting fruit, you'd want to change it every two to three days, and with their food, you want to change it every two days because sugar will become starch after a few days."