Chrysidids must be handled with soft tweezers, paying attention to the fragile articulations of legs and antennas. A good handling zone is the thorax, extremely chitinic and rigid.

Standard entomological labels and pins       No. length mm Ø mm 000 38 0.25 00 38 0.30 0 38 0.35 1 38 0.40 2 38 0.45 3 38 0.50 4 38 0.55 5 38 0.60 6 38 0.65 7 52 0.70

A good preparation of the specimen makes the study and identification easier. For this purpose, avoid a collection of specimens glued in dead position (rolled-up) as well as avoid to pin the specimens through the thorax (as you do in the case of large bugs). It's better if you follow these steps: (0) humidificate the specimens (if they are dried), (1) prepare the specimens, (2) dry them, (3) glue them on entomological labels and (4) complete all with capture labels and with entomological support pin.

(0) Humidification - If the specimen is dry (dehydrated) and you want to re-prepare it, you have to humidificate it in a hermetic jar containing cotton and water. The time of permanence is variable and you can test the state of mobility of the articulations of the specimen with a fine pin. A fast method of humidification consists in taking a syringe, removing the needle, inserting the dried specimen in the room, partially filling up the syringe with water. Turn the syringe upwards and press the piston in order to eliminate the air, then, closing the needle-hole with the inch to ensure the vacuum, pull the piston: in a such way the air contained in the specimen is extracted and replaced by water, forcing the humidification of the specimen; repeat the process 2-3 times.

(1) Preparation - To prepare the specimen you need a panel similar to the bottom of the entomological boxes - an expanded closed-cell foam - which will allow you to insert and to extract pins easily and to hold them in position. A material like that is usually known as Plastazote. Then you need a pair of soft tweezers and a variety of thin entomological pins (standard measures 000, 00, 0). First of all, if the specimen has the internal abdominal segments still inside, you have to operate with a thin pin to extract the package of the internal segments (to know the sex of the specimen), positioning the packet in a little tube containing preserving alcohol (75%), for future preparation (label it!). The internal segments will tell you if the specimen is a female or a male. Then, using the tweezers you will set the specimen lying down in ventral position, locking it to the panel with 2-3 pins intercrossing the thorax. With other pins you will symmetrically set legs, head, antennas and wings. Legs and wings must be set not too close to the body, to allow the examination of some diagnostic characters.

(2) Drying - The specimen will rest for various days on the panel in dry atmosphere, which facilitates the evaporation and therefore the dehydration of the tissues. Recently-captured specimens will require more time for the complete dehydration because also the inner apparatuses need to be dehydrated in order to avoid moulds in the closed atmosphere of your entomological boxes. Once dried - you can test the status of rigidity by using a thin pin #000 to move the wings - you can remove the locking pins, paying attention during the extraction and avoiding an elastic return of the pin against the rigid fragile appendages.

(3) Entomological label - The dried specimen is then glued on an entomological carrying-object label of adequate dimension and possibly similar to the other used for the specimens of similar dimension. To this purpose, it is useful not to have too many dimensional label models, but to have 1-2 standard measures only. The entomological label is a typographical precutted card, but you can also use cards manually cutted from transparent plastic sheets, which facilitates the examination of the ventral face of the specimen. The glue must be easy to buy and easy to remove from the specimen through humidification: a vinilic glue (Vinavil) is suggested. The packet of the extracted internal segments deserves to be dealt with separately: this is a specialistic preparation requiring the use of a stereoscopic microscope. Simply, you can pose the packet on a second card, drowning it in a drop of Eukitt or Euparal resin.

(4) Capture labels - The prepared specimen needs the capture label, with the following data: collection place (Country, State, Region, City, locality, etc.), significant geomorfologic element (lakes, forests, rivers, etc), coordinates (if known), date (using an international convention for which the month is in Roman numbers, i.e. XII (= 12) for December), name/s of collector/s (i.e. "leg. C. Darwin" or "C. Darwin coll.", depending on the Latin or English terminology). On another label you may add some notes about your field observations (i.e. on Daucus flower). Avoid an excessively personal simbology and personal numerations, because one day that specimen could be exchanged with other entomologists or be donated to a Museum: cryptic information in the labels could be a problem for the future researchers. All these data could be written on more cards, and possibly only on the upper surface.

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