Butterfly Love

While gardening today I kept watch on the monarch butterflies which seem to be attracted to the bee garden.  As I mentioned before they seem to always be zipping through the heavy flight path of the bees by the hive entrances, even getting occasionally banged into by bees while flying through their congested traffic pattern.  Several theories have played out in my head why they do this and my number one theory was because I thought they love the heavenly smell of honey that emanates from the hives.  But today the real reason for this mischievous behavior was discovered.

Another butterfly phenomenon that was observed is how two are always zipping around together to where it looks like one may be chasing another.  Which indeed was the case.  While taking a break this morning and wondering what they were doing it all became crystal clear in a moment.  That's when I noticed two butterflies locked in capitulating bliss in the butterfly garden.  I never really considered where baby butterflies came from but now it's abundantly clear.  It explains the buzzing of the bee hives by the butterfly.  Of course it's the guy butterfly showing off in front of his girlfriend.  He's probably shouting in butterfly "Hey check this out ... I ain't afraid of them steenken bees" as he swoops through in front of five very active beehives.  And apparently it worked because they finally did hook up in the end.

I took a video of the two butterflies in the heat of the moment but decided not to post it as we're a PG-13 blog and posting x rated butterfly video just didn't seem right.  So you can just let your imagination run wild ....