[Pollinator] Bees in Hand Sanitzer - The Video

[Sam Droege]

All:

We have continued to develop ways of displaying bee specimens.

Below is a video with our latest technique

http://youtu.be/izqFaia_8bU

All: 

Below is our latest video: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=UUhOIN76lBgxZ-BIIo8MvzHA&v=izqFaia_8bU&feature=player_detailpage 


This is a distillation of our work this past year on working with insect 
and invertebrate specimens in hand sanitizer, this technique is based on 
this slide share 

http://www.slideshare.net/sdroege/how-preserve-insect-specimens-in-hand-sanitizer 


In sum:   

You can display and look at under the microscope insect specimens by 
putting them in a hand sanitizer filled cuvette.  Great for showing the 
public insect specimens and letting them handle the specimens safely and 
also good for certain types of microscopic work. 

What is a cuvette?... Here is what Wikipedia says 

A cuvette is a small tube of circular or square cross section, sealed at 
one end, made of plastic, glass, or fused quartz (for UV light) and 
designed to hold samples for spectroscopic experiments. The best cuvettes 
are as clear as possible, without impurities that might affect a 
spectroscopic reading. Like a test tube, a cuvette may be open to the 
atmosphere on top or have a cap to seal it shut. Parafilm can also be used 
to seal it. 
Inexpensive cuvettes are round and look similar to test tubes. Disposable 
plastic cuvettes are often used in fast spectroscopic assays, where speed 
is more important than high accuracy. 
Some cuvettes will be clear only on opposite sides, so that they pass a 
single beam of light through that pair of sides; often the unclear sides 
have ridges or are rough to allow easy handling. Cuvettes to be used in 
fluorescence spectroscopy[1] must be clear on all four sides because 
fluorescence is measured at a right-angle to the beam path to limit 
contributions from beam itself. Some cuvettes, known as tandem cuvettes, 
have a glass barrier that extends 2/3 up inside, so that measurements can 
be taken with two solutions separated, and again when they are mixed. 
Typically, cuvettes are 1 cm (0.39 in) across, to allow for easy 
calculations of coefficients of absorption. 
The technique is useful for very small specimen inspections under the 
scope and for displaying larger specimens. 
sam 

Sam Droege  sdroege at usgs.gov 
w 301-497-5840 h 301-390-7759 fax 301-497-5624
USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center
BARC-EAST, BLDG 308, RM 124 10300 Balt. Ave., Beltsville, MD  20705
Http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov
 
I taste a liquor never brewed,
>From tankards scooped in pearl;
Not all the vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an alcohol!

Inebriate of air am I,
And debauchee of dew,
Reeling, through endless summer days,
>From inns of molten blue.

When landlords turn the drunken bee
Out of the foxglove's door,
When butterflies renounce their drams,
I shall but drink the more!

Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,
And saints to windows run,
To see the little tippler
Leaning against the sun!
    
  - Emily Dickinson 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sonic.net/pipermail/pollinator/attachments/20120505/564c3439/attachment.html>