Preserving Insects With Hand Sanitzer

Highly recommended - Watch Sam Droege's youtube video on how to preserve insects with hand sanitzer! I recommend drying any bug prior to putting your specimen into the hand santizer from personal experience just like Sam says to do in his video. I'm not exactly sure if this works with animal specimens, but I have seen it been done and I'm sure you should dry/dehydrate the animal you plan on using prior to attempting this process. Note that in the video he says to not use any fresh material(insect or animals) and also take not that if your specimen of choice is light weight, it will float indefinitely, if it's a heavier specimen it may sink over time and you need to be gentle with it! Good luck to those of you that try this:)

Instructions: Watch the video

Materials Needed:

1. Hand-sanitizer, try to buy some that doesn't have any bubble's in it

2. Plastic or clear glass container with air tight lid

3. Dried specimens or specimens that have been in alcohol, make sure these have been dried or in alcohol prior to this process. You can buy pre-dried bugs on Etsy and on Ebay for decent prices

4. Pipette/Syringe - you can find disposable pipette's on Etsy.com for under a dollar!

5. Paper clip/Thin wire/Tweezers

6. Super Glue

7. Patience

Another good reference (http://www.slideshare.net/sdroege/how-preserve-insect-specimens-in-hand-sanitizer)

• 1. How To Preserve Insect Specimens in Hand Sanitizer
  By DejenMengis, Carl White, Moriah Browning, Denise Williams, Sarah Fisher
• 2. Purpose and History
  Hand sanitizer is a gelled alcohol and can be used to create very cool insect specimen displays that, unlike pinned specimens, can be handled by children and the public
  Specimens will appear to float in air inside the vials and do not sink or move despite any amount of handling (Sam Droege has kept a vial in his pocket for 2 months without any shifting, for example)
  This technique was shown to us by Wayne White, BCE, of American Pest who has used hand sanitizer to preserve and display bed bug specimens
• 3. Pour hand sanitizer into an empty vial
• 4. Choose a dried, alcohol- or glycol- preserved specimen
• 5. Which Specimens to Use?
  Specimens that have been in alcohol, glycol, or dried work well
  Specimens that are freshly killed appear to dissolve the gel in the sanitizer for some reason (so dry out a specimen for 1-2 weeks then soak in 70% alcohol for 24 hours, then soak in hand sanitizer for 24 hours prior to displaying)
• 6. Move the specimen toward the bottom of the vial with a probe 
• 7. Bubble Removal: Water Bath Method
  At this point, there are probably many air bubbles in the vial. The next series of slides demonstrates how to remove these bubbles
  Air also exists inside specimens and needs to be removed or bubbles will gradually migrate outside the specimen over time
• 8. Pour an inch of water into a pot
• 9. Place the vial or vials into the pot, don’t forget that hand sanitizer will burn if exposed to an open flame! (if you are using a plastic vial, it will melt. So for this method you will need a glass vial)
• 10. Boil the vial in the water for 10 minutes or until most of the bubbles are gone
• 11. Carefully, take the vial out of the water
• 12. Use a pipette with a bulb to remove any remaining bubbles (you can do this instead of boiling)
• 13. Top off the vial with more hand sanitizer (Fill to the top, it's okay if it overflows when you put on the lid)
• 14. Position the specimen as preferred Even dried specimens become flexible (You can use a paper clip or tweezers to move your specimen)
• 15. Tips…
  Thoroughly clean vials before use
  You can add labels to vials that “float”
  You can add things like beads, dried flowers, sand etc. that will also float in place…and makes good “clean” fun for kids to make their own insect dioramas. OK, some adults like this too
  Always be sure to overfill with hand sanitizer and if possible permanently seal the vials to eliminate bubbles
• 16. Alternative Bubble Removal: Vacuum 
  Works reasonably well but….
• Specimens and hand sanitizer tend to bubble out of the vial more easily as air bubbles expand under vacuum
• 17. Not as efficient as heating in removing all the bubbles in the vial
• 18. Vacuum pumps are expensive

Also see these helpful links:
 http://www.entsoc.org/PDF/Pubs/Periodicals/AE/AE-2004/winter/Musings.pdf
http://thedragonflywoman.com/2011/02/21/hand-sanitizer-preservation/