How to preserve insects in resin

While specimens that are pinned or preserved in ethanol can be damaged with handling, specimens embedded in resin can‘t be. Furthermore, embedding in resin ensures that any potentially dangerous specimen, such as a tick or kissing bug that carries a virus or parasite, won’t be mishandled and hurt someone.

Preserving Soft-Bodied Insects in Alcohol

Soft-bodied insects should be preserved in plastic or glass vials with alcohol (70%-85% isopropyl or ethanol alcohol is ideal). These insects include larvae, scale insects, termites, aphids, thrips, silverfish, mayflies and earwigs.

Cover the rest of the butterfly with your resin.

Slowly pour the remainder of your resin around the butterfly so you don’t damage the wings. Completely cover the butterfly so it’s encased in the resin and filled to the top of the mold. Maintain a slow and constant pour so air bubbles don’t form inside your resin.

Step 7: Consider about Pest Control. Once you‘ve displayed your butterfly, you might want to think about pest control. You can use fumigant strips, mothballs, or little cedar planks and insert them in and that should keep the pests away. Also, you can preserve a butterfly in resin.

Casting butterfly wings in resin is an easy way to make beautiful jewelry. Glue and moisture will turn iridescent butterfly wings black permanently. Non-iridescent wings can withstand glue better but will still darken or alter slightly from direct contact with the glue.

The butterflies were perfect for my resin project. I use them in my resin coasters.

After mixing, pour the resin over the top of the insects slowly to encase them completely. After 20 minutes, use a heat gun or mini torch to pop all the bubbles that have formed. Then let the resin cure for at least 24 hours. Then pop them from the molds to reveal the most interesting paperweights.

Do butterflies decompose? A: If the butterfly is dry, it will last a long time without decomposing. There are insects in collections that are over 100 years old!

A quick and easy method to euthanize butterfly eggs, caterpillars, chrysalises, and adults is simply to place them in the freezer overnight. Within a couple of minutes, they are normally already deceased. They can be placed in a paper or plastic bag, sealed shut, and laid in the freezer.

For some butterflies, the scales can come off if you touch the wings, which can cause some damage but won’t eliminate the butterfly. “If you‘re holding a butterfly very gently, you typically will not lose a lot of scales, and it won’t damage the butterfly’s wings,” Reetz said.

Collecting was not, and is not, illegal, as many people seem to think. You can still catch a butterfly, or pick a flower, if the owner of the land will let you. Only certain rare and declining species, such as the high brown fritillary and the swallowtail, are protected by law.

butterfly collector; lepidopterologist; lepidopterist.