Dried Specimens

lepidopterists lepidopterists at home.com
Sat Jul 21 01:52:00 EDT 2001


   Xi, your concern that you may be removing your pinned specimens to early
is very real. I generally leave my smaller bodied insects such as blues,
coppers, whites, admirals medium sized fritillaries etc on the board for
about a week and a half, larger bodied insects such as certain types of
swallowtails and large bodied moths sometimes for as long as one month. This
may be over doing it but I have never experienced the problem you are
having. As well you don't mention what type of climate you live in; a
climate of high humidity will surely add to the time required to dry insects
sufficiently enough to safely remove them from the spreading board. Remember
also that insects left on the spreading board for extended periods of time
become more susceptible to critters such as dermisted beetles.

Happy collecting,
Robert Vandermoor

From: "gwang" <gwang at mb.sympatico.ca>
Subject: Dried Specimens
Date: Friday, July 20, 2001 3:24 PM

Hi all,

Since we all seem to be on the topic of drying/dried specimens these
days, I was wondering how others out there keep the wings of their
already dried specimens from warping.  When my specimens come off the
pinning board their wings are perfectly straight, but invariably, after
some time, some of the specimens' wings start to warp.  I put hydrates
in with all of my specimens to adsorb (no that's not a typo, it really
is the correct term, as opposed to absorb) any moisture in the air, but
it doesn't seem to be working out as I has anticipated. Perhaps I'm
taking my specimens off the pinning board a bit to early so that they
are actually still in the process of drying when I place them in the
specimen drawers?  Could this have caused the warping?

Peace,
Xi Wang



 
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