The main food of the Vulcan imagos is the nectar of flowers, the most popular being those of the family Compositae. Admire the magnificent colors of our traveller's wings !!
The butterfly no longer has mandibles to eat nettle leaves. Instead, it has a more complex organ, the proboscis. This trunk allows him to drink the nectar of flowers. The butterfly, by nourishing itself thus, does not reduce the quantity of food for the young caterpillars and in addition, it deposits pollen from flower to flower, participating in the reproduction of plants.
In this photo, we can clearly see the horn of the butterfly that sucks the nectar from this flower.