Insect Lore Europe Reviews 34

Teacher friends... please do not buy this awful kit. I stupidly did, and very unlike me, did not check reviews and the views of butterfly protection societies before buying this kit for my classroom. Luckily the poor things emerged during the easter holidays so the only person to see the torture was me as I had the net at home. These beautiful insects emerged deformed, if they managed to emerge at all, and I have now researched why. I will post the environmemtal information below in the hope of saving your children the trauma of this cruel venture...

While these kits offer educational value and a "magical" experience, they often do more harm than good to wild butterfly populations through the spread of disease, genetic weakening, and reduced migration success.
Raising butterflies from kits can lead to deformed wings and other developmental issues primarily due to parasitic infection, poor sanitation, and environmental issues within the confined rearing containers. While these kits are popular educational tools, the high-density, captive environment can allow diseases to spread, resulting in crippled butterflies that are often unable to survive.

My caterpillars thrived until they became butterflies. (one was extremely deformed) but all the others cannot fly properly- they fly in backflips and hit the floor hard. Tipping their heads back. I suspect a parasite. very dissapointed as I cannot release these butterflies to be free.

The kids are fascinated by the idea of growing some butterflies! There was an error in the initial order which Insect Lore were super-quick to rectify, with great communication throughout from the team.

All the stick insects hatched and died 3 days after all at the same time, except 2. Bought another kit as a gift for my brother and that did the same they all died a couple days later in the same day except one or two and were in 2 different houses. Also got him a butterfly kit and one came out with severely deformed wings. really not worth the money you spend on the kits.

Overall we love insect lore, and enjoyed the butterflies the last three years and ladybugs the last two. We bought the new ant Hill and had a disappointing experience as the design and the instructions didn't seem to match up with other ant care we found online and ultimately the ants either died immediately or within two weeks. I felt they were suffering so I threw the whole kit in the bin once they died. I wrote a review on the website about the kit, but found it had been removed. I feel this is misleading.

We have used Insect Lore for the past three summers and my children have loved watching the caterpillars turn into butterflies. It was always expensive but as we received 5 caterpillars it felt worthwhile and always were happy with the service.

Clearly now only 3 caterpillars are included to save money which is certainly not value for money. They use the reasoning that some escape - why is it not checked that enough go in case any don't make it.

We have to now hope that all three will turn into butterflies to activate the guarantee which will naturally take weeks and concerned it will be too cold to release any new ones by that point. Disappointed and I will be using another company next year. Such a shame.

I bought the caterpillar set for my sons birthday. DHL were late in delivering it but Insect Lore provided great customer service and sent a second pack as soon as they could. My son was very happy with it (rated it 183/10 😊). Recommended.

Ten pond snails arrived quickly in a bag with some water and weed, alive and well. I even got a couple of freebies, a water beetle, and a tiny snail the size of a grain of rice that I almost missed, but managed to rinse out of the bag and add to my tank.

This was traumatising for my young kids, it was like an exhibition of death, 5 caterpillars in a pot, 1 caterpillar died in the pot after reaching full size, 2 butterflies came out but with damaged wings so slowly dragged themselves around before diying, with a trail of "blood" behind them (I know it's not blood but kids see what they see). It all looked a bit inhumain, and was upsetting for my kids, much prefer to see them out in nature. Sorry but not a pleasant experience

I bought 3 butterfly kits for Easter presents.
We released 5 butterflies last week.
My son's children have had 5 butterflies appear today and my other grandchildren are watching theirs emerge at the moment.
100% success, so I highly recommend. There was an anxious wait because the last 2 kits took longer to turn in to butterflies ( son thought they were dead) but patience paid off.
Sadly this is nature and things do go wrong but we have all had a happy ending

Never again
I decided to place a big order as my toddler really enjoyed the butterflies last year but unfortunately this year was awful and £75 order down the drain
We only got 2 butterflies this year and one had a defective wing and sadly passed away. Stick insects still have not hatched and I only hatched 1 ladybird ! Never ordering again. I may as well I've thrown £75 in the bin! Very very disappointed and wasted of money

The butterfly kit surpassed expectations and the guidance and email prompts were excellent. Having bought this for my grandson, I want to buy more caterpillars. We received 5 caterpillars and today the second butterfly emerged. Beautiful. Very happy.

Bought 2x caterpillar refills for last 4/5 years always received 5 caterpillars per pot, this year both pots only contained 3 caterpillars each. I know website says 3-5 per pot just seems a bit tight with the price you have to pay.

Saw a video of these guys on Tiktok and had to try out for my niece and nephews birthday. Delivered on time like promised, i can't lie, i thought they were dead on arrival but after checking the care, they just needed a minute to wake up. Cant wait for the kids to see them turn into butterflies.

I ordered 50 butterflies for a butterfly release for our wedding. Communications were fantastic, I just needed to email to confirm the date I needed the butterflies for and it was so easy. The butterflies arrived exactly as required and full instructions were given on how to care for them to keep them fed and happy. I was so worried that they wouldn't survive the travel we had to do to get them to the hotel and their overnight stay before travelling to the venue but they were all perfectly happy in their little box! In all the celebrations we forgot to get them out of the delivery box ready for release, but actually they were fine and flew out within a minute or so. This was in loving memory of my late mum and my husbands late dad for our wedding day, it was just perfect 🥲 thank you Gemma and everyone at insect lore for all your help.

My children were given the butterfly kit as a gift from a grandparent. We ordered our caterpillars and they arrived a few weeks ago. One of the caterpillars on arrival didn’t look well - it was lethargic and I thought it was dead. However, eventually it started eating etc but it was slow and seemed different (not just younger). The other 3 caterpillars created their chrysalis but this caterpillar was lagging and proceeded to spend a few days annoying the other 3 before it eventually created its own chrysalis. After a few days they were transferred into the butterfly enclosure as requested in the instructions.

Eventually one butterfly emerged which was released two days later. It was lovely seeing it fly away. We then waited for the other three. I started to notice a bad smell coming from the butterfly enclosure and that one of the chrysalis had a white wispy line hanging off it. I had a look online and it said to remove it because it could be a parasite. I put on some plastic gloves and touched it lightly to remove it. It was a soft mess of black goo which proceeded to spill out all of the lid that the other two were hanging from. I then noticed that the other two chrysalis were also quite shrunken and black in colour. Upon touching these lightly they also expelled black goo. The entire thing (including the netted butterfly enclosure) was quickly thrown into the bin. Clearly a caterpillar was ill and I’m assuming the parasite that it had then infected the other two.

Very sad and distressing experience for my children. In addition it was very sad that the caterpillars never got to experience freedom. They grew in this tiny pot before dying in their chrysalis. In hindsight it just all seemed so very cruel. I won’t be doing it again.

10 out of the 10 caterpillars became butterflies! A child hood dream came true to watch this upclose! There all set free now. Communication was great, I did something wrong to redeem the voucher but with good communication and help how to purchase I got the caterpillars. They were good and safely shipped to The Netherlands 🇳🇱.

Caterpillars and stick insect eggs arrived safely and quickly. All 5 caterpillars are turning to chrysalis but still waiting for the stick insects to hatch. Good experience, although a little on the expensive side.

Great experience for children. If there are any issues Insect Lore customer support is great and will replace if there are any genuine issues not caused by the customer.

I've been waiting for weeks for my insect eggs to arrive. Still nothing! I've emailed customer service TWICE. No reply! Scam!