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