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No - we have a wax moth research colony. We do have a research apiary here too, so can chat with the manager there if there’s anything we can try collect?
Not big here on pointlessly pinning wild samples so fully agree, but we have lots of lab moths we dispose of. If they could be of use would be happy to send.
jupiz-
Many thanks for the offer. Will see how the collection goes this spring. I don't think I'll have any issues making the 300+ samples and yes definitely against pointlessly pinning samples. My views on collecting for science have evolved as I've begun to appreciate the critical role of collections in documenting invertebrate diversity. There are some great re-wilding initiatives going on but we can only manage those if we've got good information about positive changes in biodiversity and at least for invertebrates this means collecting. And to be in a position to do this we need trained entomologists with experience of collecting and documenting the collections.
JoePablo
Thanks. Do you keep bees by chance? I know that both the wax months are increasingly common and a bit of a pest to apiarists. We've been advised to not collect too many Lepidoptera for the collections. The butterflies don't need to be caught for ID purposes and although many of the moths can only be ID'ed by microscopic examination / dissection they shed scales and make a real mess of the collection boxes unless you're really careful apparently.