dermestids and microwaves

[Steve Halford]

On Mon, 22 Jun 1998, Robin Panza wrote:

the herbarium at > University of California at Santa Barbara tried putting
adult (either > dermestids or cigarette beetles, but I think it was the
former) in a microwave > and it seemed to have no effect, even after a
couple of minutes.  They were too > small to convert the microwaves to
heat.  >

I was microwaving dermestid infested herbarium sheets years ago
(before I learned that loss of seed viability was an undesirable
side-effect).  10-15 sheets per load for 15 sec. at 550 watts apparently
took out all stages of the beetle.

(This lead to the unfortunate experiment on pinned insects I reported on
entomo-l last week!)

Steve (halford at sfu.ca)
Museum Technician
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C., Canada