Butterfly Garden with Redemption Voucher

I purchased this item with trepidation after reading the reviews that the code would not work in the UK and that caterpillars could not be redeemed with a USA code if you were sent the wrong box. My daughter saved her pocket money for this after doing it at school, so we went ahead and purchased it. It arrived this morning. The leaflet inside has a special code that you enter either by post (with £2.99 to cover the shipping of the caterpillar larvae) or you can also enter it online and pay via paypal, which I did. It was VERY quick and easy, I can only assume that some people have been very unfortunate and have received USA stock by mistake, or that the newer stock is all UK butterfly garden boxes. Anyway, I have paid the fee and eagerly await the caterpillars being despatched. You can only pick from a limited list of delivery dates so be prepared to wait at least a week or more for your caterpillars to arrive. ALSO - if you want to do this, eggs are ONLY AVAILABLE in the spring and summer months so be sure you order this item at the right time otherwise it will be useless until the next butterfly season! The box only contains the butterfly net/house, a feeding pipette, and instruction booklet, as well as your unique code to redeem the caterpillars. THIS IS MADE ABUNDANTLY CLEAR! I cannot understand the bad reviews from those intellectually challenged people who seem to think LIVE animals can be kept indefinitely on a shelf until they are sold. Caterpillars life cycle takes about 5 weeks so they would be dead and gone before the kits were sold! Of course they charge a handling fee to get you fresh larvae sent out. If people cant comprehend this basic fact, maybe they don't have the requisite intelligence to be explaining life cycles to a child. Don't be disappointed to find NO LIVE INSECTS in your kit! Sheeeesh! (eye roll).... I will update this reviews when the larvae arrive! 27/07/13 - caterpillars arrived today. They are about 1cm long, black and hairy, and are in a small clear plastic cup with a lid and a cardboard sleeve that can be rotated around the cup to view the caterpillars. Already there are some silk like threads being spun at the bottom of the cup. Four of the caterpillars are very active and can clearly be seen crawling about and eating the thick jelly stuff at the bottom of the cup. The fifth caterpillar is alive but quite inactive and has not moved much. Some have even ventured to the underside of the cup lid. 31/07/13 - all five caterpillars are still alive, though the slow/inert one is still lying at the bottom of the cup not having moved much. They have more than trebled in size since they arrived, the largest one is now about 2.5 - 3cm long. The inside of the cup looks a bit gross now with all the caterpillar waste product (frass) and shed skins. since last night alone they are noticeably fatter; it's amazing just how fast they grow, there can be a marked difference between day and night. In this warmer weather the process is, according to the booklet, much faster. I'm expecting the chrysalis's to start forming over the next few days. At this point I'm hoping for 5 successful butterflies! 02/08/13 - 4 of the caterpillars are now hanging from the lid of the cup, one seems to be a bit more ahead of the others as it has already formed somewhat of a thick cocoon over itself, the others just look like they are hanging there. The fifth caterpillar is making its way to the top of the cup. I hope they all form cocoons at the same time as I don't know what to do if some have not and some have, as the instructions say you should not open the lid until all are hanging from the top (you can introduce bacteria etc into their environment otherwise). Exciting! 05/08/13 - All five caterpillars made it into the cocoon stage, but one was hanging not from the lid but from another cocoon. We opened the lid as per instructions and cleaned away the silk strands and debris (this apparently can cause the butterflies to become entangled and have deformed wings if you don't do this). The cocoon that was hanging from another cocoon, we have detached and laid on a paper towel at the bottom of the enclosure. The instructions say this is okay and it should still hatch out. We are now to wait for the cocoons to turn a very dark colour, and the butterflies are suppose to hatch the same day! This stage was quite yucky if I'm honest and may gross out a sensitive child, as there were 'bits' of old caterpillar skin and what looks like blood (its just 'meconium' according the booklet!). We now wait expectantly for our butterflies! It is interesting to note that the cocoons were shaking quite violently on their own as we were doing this, apparently this is a defence mechanism! Very strange to see. 12/08/13 - First butterfly hatched out yesterday morning. We missed the actual event but it was sitting at the bottom of the enclosure. Have put fresh cut oranges and peaches in the net, as well as some fresh flowers sprayed with 'nectar' (sugar water) as per instructions. The second butterfly hatched this afternoon, and a third looks like it is about to emerge. We have taken lots of pictures. Two down, three to go! 13/08/13 - Two hatched out yesterday afternoon after writing my update. We actually caught the second one on video emerging from its cocoon - you have to be fast because once it starts, it's out in about 5 seconds, it is not the slow process you might imagine! We were very lucky to catch it. A fair amount of red 'blood' drips from their back ends once emerged, so put your habitat on some newspaper. This morning we released all four butterflies as the fifth one was not hatched yet. We got some lovely pictures - they are happy to sit on your fingers etc as you place them on the plants. My daughter was a bit teary for a while but after explaining that her new friends needed to be free to see the world etc and that they would come back and visit her if they could, she felt a bit better. The fifth butterfly hatched in the last two hours, so he will be released this afternoon, as I feel they should not be kept in the net any longer then necessary. In summary this has been an amazing experience for both adult and child. The whole process from receiving larvae to releasing the butterflies took 17 days. I highly recommend this item, we are already thinking about doing it again next summer!

TIPS TO AVOID DEAD BUTTERFLIES This is a wonderful gift and children are much more likely to remember with fondness a natural wildlife experience like this, rather than a toy. It is easy to keep the net for an annual butterfly project too, and it's always magical to see them emerge. 1. Read all of the literature and view videos beforehand, and then read it all again. In fact, read a few books about insects in general, they are ace! Seriously, you need to not be in a position where the caterpillars turn up and you're scrambling around looking for the leaflet which somehow has disappeared from the box. Also you don't want to look like a bumbling amateur in front of kiddies. 2. Don't leave the care of vulnerable darling insects to kids. This all needs the care and dedication of an adult, and if you're not wringing your hands in anxiety over the fate of these tiny creatures at least twice a day you're not putting the time in. 3. Put a stiff tray under the butterfly enclosure to keep it stable when you move it around. It is a flimsy net and the bottom warps, resulting in pupae rolling around on the floor unless you put the entire thing on a hard surface. 4. Load up your cardboard chrysalis stand with a few dried peas to give it some weight and mechanical hardness, otherwise the card tends to fatigue and your carefully balanced cup lid laden with chrysalids ends up falling flat onto the enclosure floor. 5. Don't pin the chrysalis cup lid to the side of the netting. Opening and closing the zip on the lid results in the entire enclosure warping or shaking and flinging your precious animals around. Use the chrysalis holder, or blue-tack the holder to the ground leaning against the net. 6. Put a paper towel or tissue at the bottom of the enclosure - that meconium gets everywhere! 7. If you see any traces of mould in the substrate in your cup of caterpillars while they are still in the feeding up stage, carefully remove the lid after scaring the larvae onto the bottom of the cup, and scoop out any mould with a plastic spoon. This mould will spread really quickly because of the low ventilation and high humidity of the cup, and kill the caterpillars. The caterpillar food is meant to be sterile when it arrives but the hatchlings themselves may have spores on them which can grow into a big mould problem. 8. Don't remove any chrysalides that you think are dead. They probably aren't. Just put them on the floor of the enclosure and leave them alone. If they make it, great, if they don't, it's the circle of liiiife. 9. Don't bother keeping the butterflies and feeding them on nectar (a heaped teaspoon of sugar in 100 ml of water soaked into tissues on a saucer) for longer than a day or two, unless they are not healthy enough to survive in the wild and you might get a kick out of keeping them. They really prefer being outdoors and risk damaging wings if they are kept in the enclosure for a long time, and they get nectar all over themselves and it's terrifying to watch. 10. I have made this sound like a difficult, harrowing and thankless task. It is actually not hard, and is incredibly rewarding to witness a miraculous natural event with your kids, Enjoy!

Incredible product, great value for money. Bought this for our daughter's 7th birthday and have since bought a number as presents as something a little different and for our daughter's classroom. The kit arrived quickly and was well packaged. The caterpillars were easy to order online (with this kit you only pay for postage and packaging of caterpillars) and you can choose from given dispatch days. All of the caterpillars formed cocoons and eventually hatched into butterflies. Our children loved watching the life cycle, watching the caterpillars grow and eventually feeding the butterflies. When you're finished with the butterfly garden, it's very easy to clean in warm soapy water (as recommended in the instructions), it dries quickly and folds back down to enable you to put it all back in the box, ready for next time. In the instruction/information leaflet it does say to cover surfaces of furniture as the butterflies can leave a mess when emerging. This is great advice as they do leave a red residue. We just used 2 layers of paper towel underneath the garden and it was fine. Easily cleaned up and no damage to the unit it was sitting on. I would definitely recommend this product to any parent. It's a fabulous learning experience. Opens up lots of conversations and makes the children more aware of what's going on in the world outside their door. Our children are constantly watching for butterflies and Keeping an eye out for cocoons. We are all looking forward to repeating this again next year!

Ich habe das Schmetterlingsset sowohl für meinen damals 7jährigen Sohn als auch für meinen 9jährigen Neffen gekauft. Es ist alles im Set super beschrieben. Man muss über den beiliegenden Gutschein per Internet die Raupen bestellen. Und nochmals was bezahlen. Das wußte ich vorher, sodass dies nichts "Überraschendes" war. Die Raupen kamen wohlbehalten bei uns an. Wir haben uns genau an die Vorschriften gehalten und nach einigen Wochen konnten die entwickelten Schmetterlinge in die Freiheit entlassen werden. Die Kinder brauchten dabei immer die Unterstützung der Erwachsenen, was aber ja kein Problem war, denn auch wir Erwachsenen fanden das Projekt spannend! Die Entwicklungsstufen zu sehen, das war schon aufregend! Es ist zauberhaft, so nah dabei zu sein, wenn sich ein fast fertig entwickelter Schmetterling auf ein Stück Banane oder Orange stürzt. Bedenken sollte man, dass sich die Aufzucht schon etwas hinzieht und man sich schon kümmern muss. Also auch an den eigenen Urlaub denken! Und den Kinder muss klar sein, dass sie die Tiere ziemlich schnell, wenn sie fertig entwickelt sind, in die Freiheit entlassen müssen. Das geht dann sehr aprubt. Aber wenn die Kinder das wissen, ist es kein Problem.

I went back and forth on whether to give this 5 stars or not. I have used an Insect Lore Butterly pavilion for over 20 years and needed another to share with students in a classroom. I purchased this item here on Amazon on 12/10/2004. I used the listing from my order history to order a new one. However, I didn't carefully read the current listing. The original is 2' tall by 14" wide. This one is 12" tall by 10" wide. Very big difference!! You can go to Insect Lore and purchase the same one I have for $14.95 - with shipping and tax it comes to $28. (I know not everyone wants a large one, and taller means tippier if you have small children.) The habitat is an excellent design, sturdy, well made and just the right size to put on a counter or coffee table where everyone can watch them grow. The plastic feeder that comes with this kit is cute, but it's very tiny. The journal booklet is nice, but Insect Lore ought to make it available as a free download - or maybe for $1 - for those who want to print their own. They're charging $3.99 each on their site, supposedly marked down from $5. With all of that said, I've been growing butterflies with children for over 20 years. I've done this with my own children, at schools, home school co-ops, in our neighborhood and at church. (I can highly recommend Clearwater Butterfly for purchasing caterpillars.) I can't say enough about what a wonderful experience this is, and it's a lot easier than growing chicks - haha - take it from me! Praying mantises are also great and fascinating. Ants and ladybugs too - just do that in your garden/yard - not in the house! Try them all and teach your children and your friends' children to love insects and God's extraordinary creation. There is nothing like the touch of a butterfly on your hand and then watching it fly away, especially for a child. This is one of the best grandparent, aunt or uncle gifts - not to be left for the parents to-do list, though! Make it a special thing you do with them and make some memories.

Purchased for my granddaughter. She loves it. It’s a great learning tool. Certainly recommend it.

This pack came with a voucher to use to breed butterflies. The website is in Czech Republic and the voucher will not work as I am in Ireland.

Bellissima esperienza