Accelerated drying..? Any methods?

[Kaspar]

Hi! I wonder if you have any accelerated drying methods? If drying via the oven is a possibility for butterflies and other insects, what is the temperature needed? And for how long should the specimens stay in there?

[Adam Cotton]

Using a kitchen oven is very dangerous for the specimens, it is very easy to burn the specimens.

Best results are always obtained when you take your time, but if you want to speed things up I would recommend using a cardboard box with an old fashioned light bulb hanging inside. This will produce enough, but not too much heat to dry the specimens without damaging them. Beware that fast drying in high temperatures often result in curled up wings ... or worse!

I have a custom built drying cabinet with an electric heater filament and a thermostat set to only 40C. I keep setting boards inside for at least two weeks.

Adam.

[joniverson]

One thing I have been wondering about, which hopefully someone might shed some light on, is using vacuum to help dry specimens faster? I was thinking of building one of the small DIY ones anyway for eliminating resin bubbles before I pour and wondered if a specimen could be placed in the chamber with vacuum drying? The problem would be determining how much vacuum for safety of insect... too much and I think the insect would be damaged.

One other thing I'm reading about people doing is placing bugs in a sealed jar containing silica gel. They keep the bug in the sealed jar until the gel no longer changes color and the process is supposedly quicker than normal drying. Again, any thoughts welcome.

[billg]

Hi,

i use a laboratory incubator as seen in the link below. Following the pic of mine is a link to the best place I found with the best material and prices.  One thing I will say is that if one mounts freshly caught specimens, mount them and wait two or three days prior to putting in incubator.  If the specimens was a mounted from having been softened from an envelop, it can be put in right away.  Fresh material needs to have the outer exoskeleton harden a bit before any kind of heating to prevent oils from seeping out via a fresh bug.

Fresh material a few days old will be done dry and fine in 36 to 48 hours in a forced air incubator at 115 degrees.......longer if in a convectional heated unit.  Specimens that were mounted from having been in envelopes will need 20 to 24 hours in the unit.
 
More information is in the link below.....plz check out.


collector-secret.proboards.com/thread/2037/mothball-substitute

[trehopr1]

Though I have never personally tried drying my specimens in any accelerated manner; I have heard from other collectors that it does not do well for small leps of certain colors. It was mentioned for example that moths of (white) color predominantly and those of light (green) color (Geometridae) suffer a color loss or change in any process utilized. Only proper board time I was told works best as some colors can be altered.
Would like to hear of any differing thoughts....

[billg]

Interesting thoughts.  All I can say is that I have not yet tried doing many geometrids in it.  I can only recall doing the incubator with green...A. lunas and with white...Leopard moths....scribbona and they came out fine.  I'll try a few green and a few white micros I caught in LA and report later on.

[joniverson]

Since my July reply, I have mainly been using a carefully temperature monitored toaster oven for 90% of my lep drying. I mount them on the mounting board a short time after capture, then place the lep/ board into the oven. Temperature averages 120 F. After 12 hours, wings are stiff enough that I can remove pins and strips for use on additional specimens captured. No additional curling has been noted and I will leave the resulting unmounted specimens in the oven for a least a week for small specimens, two weeks for large. After the time, I remove the specimen, then add it to a plastic see through air tight container containing both silica gel and moth balls. Each container has a humidity meter to make sure it stays under 10%. This is how they are stored until I'm ready to mount in frames or, in my case, hermetically sealed acrylic containers for display. The display containers also have hidden silica gel and moth balls.

I also experimented successfully with freeze drying caterpillars in early October. This involves using a combination of desiccant and frozen specimen under vacuum in the freezer for a period of time (2-3 weeks) until dried. This is the only method I found to properly preserve caterpillars without distorting the body or blackening.