Entomologists on Twitter got all excited last week when a tutorial for preserving insects in hand sanitizer was passed around. As a teacher and an entomologist who does a lot of aquatic insect outreach activities, I was very excited to learn about this method! Aquatic insects are typically stored in glass vials filled with alcohol, which unfortunately means the insects all sink to the bottom. It’s then really hard to position them so that you can see particular features. If you want a good look at the insect, you usually have to take it out of the vial and put it in a dish of alcohol. This all makes insects in vials hard to use in outreach activities. However, the hand sanitizer method featured photos of insects suspended in the middle of vials. No sinking to the bottom, no turning the vial over and over and over trying to get the insect flipped over just right to get a close look at a particular piece. They’re supposed to be durable too. I decided I had to try it – and it totally worked!
I love this method, so I wanted to share it here. While it is probably not a great way to preserve insects for research (I’m sure there are things in hand sanitizer that are not so great for, say, genetic analyses), it is perfect for display specimens. I think this is going to work especially well with kids, those cute little destroyer of specimens in vials. :)
Things You’ll Need:
- clear hand sanitizer
- vials (clean – can be ordered online in a variety of styles, search for “glass screwtop vial” or visit Bioquip)
- insects – dry or preserved in alcohol (fresh supposedly don’t work well)
- forceps or toothpick/wooden skewer
- eye dropper or pipet with bulb
- small saucepan
- stove or hot plate
Instructions:
You’ve gathered your gear, so let’s get started! First, pour or pump hand sanitizer into the vial, filling about 2/3 full:
I overfilled mine when I was taking the photos – you definitely want to leave more space at the top! Next, put a bug in the vial and press into the hand sanitizer using forceps or a toothpick:
Don’t worry too much about the exact position at the moment. Just get them into the gel. Notice how many air bubbles are in the vial with the bugs:
That defeats the purpose of creating gorgeous display bugs! The original tutorial spoke of a few different ways to get the bubbles out, but I followed their preferred method and boiled my vials. This has the dual purpose of getting the air bubbles out of the gel surrounding the bug and removing the air bubbles from inside the bug if you are using dry specimens. Fill a saucepan with about 1 inch of water (water should come about halfway up the side of the vials) and place the open vials upright on the bottom of the pan:
Carefully bring the water to a gentle simmer, taking care not to let the vials fall over. Simmer for 10-15 minutes or until most of the bubbles are gone. NOTE: Be very careful that no hand sanitizer comes into contact with the burner or any open flames or it will burst into flames! ANOTHER NOTE: Unless you want little glass-shard-and-alcohol-gel bombs simmering on your stove, be sure to leave the lids off. The gel inside the vial will boil, so this is where over-filling the vials like I did becomes a problem. It’s not the end of the world if they boil over, but it does give you extra work later. After the bubbles are gone (there may be some large bubbles coming up from the bottom – don’t worry about those too much for now), carefully remove the vials from the water. Your vials should look like this:
No bubbles! Now position your insects in the gel as you would like for them to be displayed:
You can be as picky as you want during this stage! The insects will become soft as they boil in the hand sanitizer, so you can position legs and antennae and other parts relatively easily at this stage, even if you used dry insects. I didn’t care so much about the exact position of the body parts, so I just put them in the center of the vials where they were easy to look at. If there are any remaining bubbles, remove them with an eye dropper or pipet with a bulb:
Next, you need to fill up the rest of the vial. Leaving air at the top of the vial will eventually result in air bubbles working their way into the gel. I also learned through trial and error that putting cold hand sanitizer on top of hot sanitizer results in a WHOLE lot of bubbles! Let the vials cool to about room temperature, then add more hand sanitizer:
To avoid getting bubbles later, you don’t want to leave any headspace above the gel. Fill your vials a little overfull so that some hand sanitizer will squish out when you put the lid on:
If there are bubbles in the gel after you top off the vials, remove them with the pipet or eye dropper as described above. Then, screw on the lids!:
Wipe the excess hand sanitizer off the glass around the lid. Then, if your vials boiled over like some of mine did, run them under some hot water for a few seconds and wipe the vials with a soft cloth until all the gel remnants are gone and the glass is clear.
Voila! You now have some spiffy insects suspended in the center of a vial, perfect for displaying, taking to outreach events, showing to your colleagues, letting little kids look at, giving as gifts to your entomologist friends, etc. The insects will remain in place, regardless of how you hold the vials:
I think these are going to be fabulous for my outreach events! The insects are a hundred times easier to deal with when suspended in the alcohol gel than when left in vials of alcohol. You can also see all the parts rather well, even if the bug is pretty far from the edges of the glass. I can think of two downsides though. One is that, though this method is easy to do, it is a bit fiddly and thus takes some patience and time. The two vials I created for the photos together took about 45 minutes. Second, depending on the style of lid on your vials, you may need to check the hand sanitizer levels inside the vial now and again. I will be checking my display vials often so that I don’t get bubbles. Because bubbles are bad. At least if you’re a compulsive perfectionist about this sort of thing like I am… :)
Because you can suspend things inside the gel, you can do some fun things with your vials. Maybe try layering several morphs of the same species in one vial. I’m thinking of creating some life cycles vials that will demonstrate how my water bugs develop from an egg into adults. You could layer a whole bunch of insects in one really big container and use it as a home decor item. Okay, okay. I’m probably the only person in the world who would ever do that, but I would love it! Still, there are lots of possibilities. Play around and have fun!
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Print, save, or e mail this tutorial in PDF format! Click on this link and the PDF will appear in a new tab or window. Also, the original tutorial has more images of completed vials, including some vials containing several specimens. Enjoy!
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This is great! Thanks so much for sharing your tips. I have grandchildren that are fascinated by insects but I fear every time I let them look at my collection and they point their little fingers at the pinned specimens. Now I have a way to let them have hands on.
BTW, I remember years ago in an intro zoology lab we had fruit flies from various genetic crosses mounted in glycerol-filled plate-like containers so students could examine and count the different mutant phenotypes. It wasn’t a very popular exercise, but the bugs were easily observed and didn’t fly away. I think they were sandwiched between two plexiglass sheets in a circular opening. To be clearer: you need three 3 in. by 3 in. pieces of 1/4 in. plexiglass. Using a hole saw, cut a circular disk out of one of the pieces. Glue this piece flat onto one of the other pieces, fill the cavity with glycerine, add the flies, then glue the remaining piece on top. You now have a fly sandwich that can be placed under a dissecting scope. I suspect that there will be trouble with air bubbles, but the principle is like what you’ve described with the hand sanitizer.
The glycerol plates sound like a good technique, if a bit cumbersome! And I can totally understand your hesitation to share you insect collection with the kiddos. I’m working with 7 years olds this semester and they need to put their hands on EVERYTHING! Plus, they don’t really get the concept of fragile when it comes to insect specimens. I think this hand sanitizer method will prove to be an excellent one for use with kids because it contains no chemicals except those that scads of parents already slather their children with and it makes the specimens easy to see. Hope it works out for you!
My boyfriend thinks I’m a creep because I saved a bunch of the wasps that died in our house last summer (when we were completely taken over by them). I don’t know why – I just know theres something awesome I could do with them. This is awesome, thanks.
Ha ha! At least you don’t have half of your freezer devoted to insects the way most entomologists do! I don’t think there’s anything wrong at all with saving a few dead insects for a project down the line.
This looks interesting.
By chance, the latest issue of CICINDELA has a paper by Matt Brust that talks about embedding insects in resin blocks. He’s made examples of quite a few species of tiger beetles for use in his teaching. He got the idea when he found some blocks that he estimates are at least 85 years old, and the specimens inside are still perfect (just the resin is slightly yellowed). Anyway, interesting stuff.
I think resin blocks would be a better, but liquid resin tends to be really toxic and can be hard to work with so I wouldn’t want to recommend it to anyone who doesn’t have some heavy duty respiratory safety gear and the proper skin protection. I’ve mounted specimens in resin before and it’s a major pain. More power to the people who are willing to put in the time and effort to do it well!
I just tried this method using a Cicindela I had that was a few years old. It floated to the top during the simmer stage, but I was able to reposition it once the sanitzer had cooled. I did get a few bubbles around the bug doing this, but it works!! I was able to use my hand lens to see the fantastic colors. It would be very easy for young childen to see bugs this way. Thanks!!
You’re welcome! Glad it worked out for you! It’s good to know you could still see the colors on the tiger beetle after boiling too.
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just seaching for this very thing, have had a delivery of pest insects and stages in dry viles and thought they wouldn’t last long at work with my fellow pesters trying to look at them , this is a great idea and thanks for sharing it will be off to buy some hand gel tommrow .
great idea would you mind if i passed this on to my face book page.
thanks
s goodrum
Go right ahead! It’s there for people to use, so feel free!
thanks for that !
I have been playing about with this tonight and found that the viles i had are a little small to heat up in the pan they kept falling over , so what i have done is found that if you syringe the gel up and slowly fill the vile up you only get a few air bubbles which you can then syringe out.
keep the syringe above the gel as you are filling it and the air pop’s out .
what a great thread thanks for sharing it with us.
s goodrum
Thanks for The information on preserving insects. I am collecting information for some school kids that are going to be making a required insect collection this year. Some may want to use the sanitizer method. I am posting a link to your site. I have also come up with a crude kill jar system that eliminates the problems of transferring the insect to the kill jar. It has work well for me killing the insects without removing them from the net. I don’t know of anyone who has used such a system. The kill Jar can also be used to catch insects because the alcohol is in the cup. The whole system is a Marked 16 oz cup with a paper towel in the bottom soaked in alcohol with a upside down eight ounce freeze dried folgers jar with holes drilled in the lid. The jar and cup seal together as if they were made for that purpose.
It can be seen on my site.
Shiny. This will be awexome for my school students.
When you boil it, don’t you boil out the alcohol?
I’m sure a lot of it is boiled away, but I think the point is embedding it in the gel that remains behind. I haven’t tested this though, so I’m not 100% sure this is the case.
Enjoyed every bit of your article.Really thank you! Really Cool.
I’m so glad! It was a fun paper to read, so I felt I had to share it and spread the invertebrate conservation love.
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Cool! I took the liberty of using your pictures and writing the recipe in Turkish for my people. I referenced you (and the original recipe). Please let me know if this is a problem and thanks for sharing the information!
Here it is: http://www.biyolokum.com/2012/03/araya-biraz-doga-tarihciligi/
No problem! I’m happy that it will be available in your language.
This is wonderful! But if someone could help me with a bit of an issue, I’d very much appreciate it. :(
I’ve been wanting to preserve a few Araneus Diadematus, along with other kinds of spiders. I keep them to observe them, until they pass at the end of summer.
It says in the article that you can’t put fresh specimens directly into the hand sanitizer. BUT, spiders, at least the large bodied orb weavers, tend to shrivel terribly!
That being said, how will I keep the spiders from shriveling before I put them into the gel?
And for how long would I have to wait before actually transferring them into it?
I’m sorry for so many questions! And again, thank you so much for this article!
You could soak your spiders in alcohol (ethyl or isopropanol) for a few weeks to replace the water in your specimens before preserving them in the gel. That’s what I do with my aquatic insects and it works well!