InsectNet forum

Hi there, I was just wondering if any of you have found a good way to clean your specimens. The ones in my collection that need cleaning are mainly
small coleoptera and are covered in dust. Are there any quick ways to solve this without breaking my collection?

Compressed air? I mean, carefully utilized of course.

My thoughts are that you could take each one and individually swirl them around "gingerly" in a deep bowl or cooking pot which has a fair measure of 70% rubbing alcohol placed in it.

It should easily remove any dust or lint with the specimens coming clean. Therefore, no need to be concerned about potentially blowing off any parts using a can of compressed air.

Of course remove any insect labels before dipping them in alcohol !

there is the canned air I use for blowing dust around the house, it won't do much good now, but Bioquip sold a cleaning fluid for insects,
in particular, beetles, it's components are- ethyl alcohol ,ethyl acetate and Benzene (5.5%). That's exactly how the ingredients are listed
on the bottle. It was sold as "Barber's Fluid"
I'd guess a very soft artist's paint brush might help.

A friend who collects "dirty" beetles (like Histerids) uses an ultrasonic water bath. These are generally used to clean jewelry and not that expensive to buy. These beetles come caked with mud, fungal spores, and general dirt. The ultrasonic cleaning removed this dust completely, while leaving the cuticle perfectly intact and very shiny. It just takes a few minutes. Of course, he does this before they are pinned, and his bugs are coming right out of alcohol, so they are wetable. As tree hopper said above, I think you would need to put a drop of alcohol on them before you drop them into the water bath. Or you could just use alcohol in the water bath to begin with.

John

I have used the same procedure for degreasing for nearly a half century. Nearly all coleoptera, in varying percentages become greasy, The dust attaches to beetles because of the grease, which may or may not be visible to the naked eye. I use this same method for most all moths, even delicate small clearwing moths. Certain families/genera have specimens that 100% become greasy e.g. Cossidae, Sesiidae, the lepidoptera genus Papaipema, and require degreasing after drying.

The specimens are dropped directly into undiluted mineral spirits, pin, and labels too. So no depinning or delabeling involved. So man-hours of work is eliminated and by not removing labels there is no mislabeling specimens afterwards. I have noted that printing labels with liquid inks often do not withstand degreasing solvents of any kind. For many decades, I use a dedicated dry powder black-ink to produce hundreds of thousands of sheets of professionally produced data labels on card stock.

Green lepidoptera specimens may be a problem, experimentation on one specimen, go from there. I fill short flatter glass jars half full with clean mineral spirits, drop one by one as many specimens into the jar as room safely allows. E.g. I may place 50 or so spread clearwing moths in a single jar for 5-10 days, remove carefully with tweezers, place on pinning board, place 3-6 feet in front of low velocity box fan for 2-3 hours indoors (not outdoors, as the dried specimens will absorb water outside). Huge beetles may require multiple degreasings, and up to 8-10 hours of indoors air drying each treatment. Best to do these evaporation activities in a separate room away for humans breathing.

For lepidoptera with fringe on wings, it is best to pass a tiny artists brush barely touching the fringe working brush front to back. Sometimes all is needed is one brush pass to fringe to an amazing restoration. This must be done just as the wings are nearly dried. It cannot be done tomorrow, as the fringe will dry in place without touching the fringe while still pliable.

Having worked in chemical plant laboratories for nearly 10 years back in the late 1960s-1970s, I experimented with every solvent you can think of e.g.:Xylene, hexane, pentane, ethyl acetate, carbon tetrachloride, benzene, toluene, chloroform, terpenes, numerous petroleum hydrocarbons, organic solvents, esters, ethers, acetone, methyl-ethyl ketone, numerous alcohols of high purity, etc, etc, etc. None of them was without significant detrimental effects to lepidoptera. Generally, the biggest problem with all of these is that they work too well (removing too much oils, causing permanent damage (shriveling) to wings and delicate specimens) or not well at all for this application, e.g. some may permanently discolor lepidoptera and coleoptera. Still plain mineral spirits is the superior winner. Never use lead-free gasolines, acetone, methanol, ethyl acetate or other acetates, carbon tetrachloride, ethanols have added unknown ingredients unless pure ethanol. Don't heed my warnings, go ahead, but remember I told you so.

Regarding freshly captured dung beetles and similar problematic specimens. I run 80-90 dung beetle traps daily while on my lawn tractor. The captures live or dead go directly into jars generously filled 70% isopropyl alcohol. By the time I complete running the traps around my place (60-90 minutes), the beetles have bounced around (agitation) in the jar of alcohol as though they had been in a washing machine or ultrasonic cleaner. Most always no further cleaning is necessary. Attached is a handy photo of the larger beetle captures out of my dung beetle traps and larger beetles from my light traps placed together on one day from my traps. These illustrated are right out of the 70% Isopropyl alcohol and nearly all of these do not require any further cleaning after removing from the 70% Isopropyl alcohol. Soaking in alcohol allows the specimens to remain pliable until fully dried, in my case low temperature controlled oven drying. Sometimes when specimens are left for weeks/moths in traps, the antennae and legs are dried and brittle/fragile. The Isopropyl treatment solves that problem too. Many museum curators and collectors ask me how I get my beetles so clean. NOW you know my secret!! Example of dry ink home printed labels attached.

Thank you for your inputs. I think I'll go ahead and try all of them and figure out which works best for me.