Bees, Mineral Oil, Brake Cleaning Fluid

[Droege, Sam]

All

My two student technicians (copied) have been experimenting with (among other things) using a non-toxic (to humans) mineral oil layer on top of salt brine in vane/bucket/cup style traps that can be left out for weeks if not months.  The question for the group is about cleaning these specimens not the technique (more about that later this winter but a couple of observations immediately follow).

1. There is no detergent in the water layer.
2. Bees stay floating in the oil layer and do not drop into the water (i.e., surface tension of water is still present)
3. There is effectively zero evaporation of any of the fluids
4. If the top of the trap is open it will continue to collect water which could cause the trap to overflow but does not degrade the oil layer.
   
   

More to come about the technique and what it is and isn't capturing.

So, the problem at hand is that the specimens are soaked in mineral oil and need to be cleaned to be useful.  We have tried a number of things to degrade the oil.  Acetone, strong to very strong detergents (even Decon), ethyl alcohol, isopropyl (99.9% theoretically excellent for non-polar fluids like mineral oil), acetone, ultrasonic cleaners, seed beads (for gentle hair rubbing) in lab shakers, long soaks, hot water, but all are unsatisfactory, leaving, at minimum, oil-soaked clumps of hair in bees with even moderately long hair.

Until.

I saw some mineral collectors were using brake cleaning fluid to clean oily minerals. So, I went to my buddy Ralph at Superior Auto and said that I needed a little bit of brake cleaning fluid, and he said: "don't you want a whole can?" and I then had to explain about cleaning bees with brake fluid cleaner and that he was participating in cutting edge science. So he gave me a smidge (he did say I could have a whole can if I wanted one).

This formulation of brake cleaning fluid uses 95 to 100% Perchloroethylene (PCE or PERC) which also used by dry cleaners (note other formulations use isopropyl alcohol which is not effective for the task at hand).

We blotted off the excess oil on the bees and then dropped them into a vial of PERC and let them sit overnight, shook it around a bit, blotted off the bees, put into a detergent bath for an hour or so, shook a bit, cleaned as per usual and many (but not all) of the long-haired bees were nearly perfect, and none had oil soaked/matted hair.

So, well and good, but this is pretty nasty stuff, so using this cleaning routine is requires a hood, but am looking to the listserv to see if anyone else has suggestions.

For example, I note that other nasty things like toluene also have similar kb values (a measure of solvent power) as does xylene but we have not tried them, but perhaps you have?  Any other less toxic chemicals would be nice to know about.

Thanks

Sam

Mineral Expectations

limestone awfully lonesome

since my father’s gone

and miss our little talcs

and conversations

how I marbled

at the strength of this good man

a grocer who would sandstone much all day

that he developed varicosities

in both his legs and never once complained

even though I took his love for granite

I can still recoal his exact words and sediments

it slate for him he’d say too late

but you shale mica difference in this world

he’d point at me and shake his finger

of quartz he understood and wished for me

not just the same old schist

but a future that pyrites

would be mined

and mined alone

• Bruce Dethlefsen

 

Keep your Property Half Wild

Cell: 301 433 5390

Alternative email: droe...@gmail.com

 

[Roulston, T'ai H (thr8z)]

Brake cleaning fluid is nasty stuff indeed. After failing with every potential solvent at hand to get the resin out of split wooden blocks that had been nested in by Megachile sculpturallis I asked a mechanic for whatever can he had with the most skulls and crossbones on it. That was the brake cleaning fluid. It did a decent but not fabulous job with the resin, better than anything I tried, but I decided to use the blocks for starting campires rather than use enough brake cleaning fluid to clean them, figuring I’d finish off myself first. So I’ll tack on to Sam’s request for anything less toxic than brake cleaning fluid for clearing out M. sculpturalis resin as well. Note, the resin for bees like M. campanulae seems much easier to clean out.

T'ai

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[kirap...@gmail.com]

Hi all,

 

A master’s student at the University of Manitoba (Mabel Currie) working with horse flies used similar traps with oil (although ­­­­­­­she used canola oil) and found that lacquer thinner worked well to clean the flies. I’d recommend giving that a try for the mineral oil traps at least.

 

Thanks,

 

Kira Peters (she/her)

Entomology PhD Student

Entomology MSc.

Honours Biology BSc.

University of Manitoba

pet...@myumanitoba.ca

(226)-929-0906

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