[Sam Droege]

How to Come Back from Your Expedition with Beautiful Specimens and Beautiful DNA

I have gone on many expeditions (sometimes just "vacations") to collect bees in my career.  Initially I would try to pin up specimens as I went, but that was too time consuming and tiring after a long day and inconvenient if trying to fly back home.  So the next iterations was to store things in alcohol (which often meant finding local alcohol since I could not fly with it (note you need to drain the alcohol from the bags when getting ready to leave for the airport as airplanes have restrictions on amounts of alcohol you can carry on) and finally I progressed to simply freezing specimens after coming in from the field (draining any soapy water out).  These methods worked but long stays in fluid decreases you ability to fluff specimens back up.  If you can process specimens the day of capture you can easily achieve nice fluffy specimens, more quickly, with fewer steps.

Here is my current procedure.

• Collect specimens in the field.  Bees in bowl traps would have been caught in soapy water and bees hand-netted would have been deposited in 50 ml centrifuge tubes filled with soapy water.
• Bowl trap specimens are filtered out of the traps with a brine shrimp net and placed in whirl paks or baggies/zip locks (zip locks are easiest and you can often invert the entire brine shrimp directly into the bag).  Tube specimens are left in their tube.  During the day these collections are simply left in a bag, box, or the floor of the passenger compartment without trying to keep them cool.

Back at the motel (or wherever) at some point before bed:

• Centrifuge Tubes - Shake vigorously to dislodge pollen.
• Bees in bags - Add hot water with dish detergent and shake vigorously.
• Pour into brine shrimp net (not regular aquarium net ... holes too big).
• Rinse under tap water until water runs clear.
• (Optional, for even better removal of material put specimens in jar with hot water with detergent after the first rinse and shake again and repeat rinse in net.)
• Pick up net and bring to dish towel and use towel to blot off some water from the outer surface of the net.
• Put specimens on a paper towel or napkin, roll up, lightly squeeze to remove more water.
• Put into canning jar, take a piece of fiberglass window screen that covers the canning jar top and screw the open ring of the canning jar back on to the jar thus trapping the screen to the jar.
• Take a blow dryer and blow hot air on high into the canning jar, holding the jar so it slopes slightly downward towards the opening, the goal is to shake the jar and dryer such that the specimens bounce around to fluff up their hair (both canning jars and blow dryers are often available in thrift stores in case you forget).
• After about a minute or so check the most densely haired specimens to see if they are dry and fluffy (especially look in their sides) air dry too long and you can break antennae, too much time on the screen proper and you the claws will grab and you can pull off tarsi.
• Dump into plastic petri dish, let cool down for a few minutes, add collection information on a piece of paper, and include paper with specimens, add lid to petri dish. tape shut on both sides, place in freezer.
• (Optional, if you have time you can go ahead an add a pin to the specimens, before putting in freezer).
• When ready to leave put petri dishes in a bag and then add to your luggage.
• When you get back home put in freezer again.
• Take out and process whenever convenient.

Yes, you can use traditional kill jars, but those require obtaining toxic chemicals, the specimens often get gummed up if you don't clean your jars regularly while in the field, and it is slower to transfer a net full of bees to a kill jar than it is to a centrifuge tube filled with soapy water. If using ethyl acetate most people believe that this will degrade the specimen's DNA to unsuitability.

sam

Candlelight

Crossing the porch in the hazy dusk

to worship the moon rising

like a yellow filling-station sign

on the black horizon,

you feel the faint grit

of ants beneath your shoes,

but keep on walking

because in this world

you have to decide what

you’re willing to kill.

Saving your marriage might mean

dinner for two

by candlelight on steak

raised on pasture

chopped out of rain forest

whose absence might mean

an atmospheric thinness

fifty years from now

above the vulnerable head

of your bald grandson on vacation

as the cells of his scalp

sautéed by solar radiation

break down like suspects

under questioning.

Still you slice

the sirloin into pieces

and feed each other

on silver forks

under the approving gaze

of a waiter

whose purchased attention

and French name

are a kind of candlelight themselves,

while in the background

the fingertips of the pianist

float over the tusks

of the slaughtered elephant

without a care,

as if the elephant

had granted its permission.

       - Tony Hoagland

[Eli Wyman]

Hi all,

   Sam's methodology is very similar to what I do, but I have one more step that I think is worthwhile. After washing with soapy water and rinsing with tap water I would give the bees a quick rinse with the highest % ethanol I had on hand (usually 75%). The ethanol displaces the water and it evaporates much faster than water, the result being that you needn't blow dry them as long, which causes less parts to break off and I think the bees become less brittle from the heat. I have not tested and compared the two methods, so take this with a grain of salt. 

Cheers,

Eli

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[Nash Turley]

Thanks Sam, always helpful to see how you and others are doing this stuff. 

In the Pennsylvania Bee Monitoring program we work with volunteers who have been doing collections over the last few years and we have kept tweeking our protocols to make them as quick and simple as possible. We collect straight into 70% isopropyl alcohol (I've seen the mention of isopropyl spark debate, but it's always worked fine for us and it's easy for everyone to get) when netting and if from soapy water traps we sieve them in the field and transfer to alcohol. With them coming from alcohol, simply patting them dry with paper towels and letting them sit for a bit works well, and occasionally a bit of blow drying is needed for big bees. Shaking them around in the alcohol gets them clean enough and avoiding the soapy water washing makes drying them a lot easier, as Eli was saying.  Here is our sorting and drying protocol if you are interested, and our other protocols are on our page as well, links on the left-hand side, plus there are videos showing most of the methods as well :) 

Nash 

Nash Turley 

Postdoctoral Researcher 

Department of Entomology

Pennsylvania State University 

nashturley.com

he/him/his

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