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Those are nice looking boxes.
However everything I have found about them is contrary to your info about laying eggs. Butterflies usually lay their eggs on their preferred host plant. For Monarchs this is Milkweed.
The presumption of these boxes is that they will hibernate or seek shelter at night in them. This also does not appear to be true. Researchers on the East Coast found that the boxes were almost universally used by paper wasps and paper wasps are predators of butterflies and their caterpillars/cocoons. I support this on the west coast where I have put them up and only found wasps (mostly Yellow Jackets) nesting or hibernating in them over winter. It might be a good way to trap and kill next years queens before they start their new nest in the spring. I sometimes also find them in my swallow nest boxes in the winter and use a propane torch to kill them while they are semi dormant.
However everything I have found about them is contrary to your info about laying eggs. Butterflies usually lay their eggs on their preferred host plant. For Monarchs this is Milkweed.
The presumption of these boxes is that they will hibernate or seek shelter at night in them. This also does not appear to be true. Researchers on the East Coast found that the boxes were almost universally used by paper wasps and paper wasps are predators of butterflies and their caterpillars/cocoons. I support this on the west coast where I have put them up and only found wasps (mostly Yellow Jackets) nesting or hibernating in them over winter. It might be a good way to trap and kill next years queens before they start their new nest in the spring. I sometimes also find them in my swallow nest boxes in the winter and use a propane torch to kill them while they are semi dormant.
