B2—Lancaster Fanning, Saturday, June 16,1984
Lebanon 4-H'er compiles
award-winning insect collection
BY SUZANNE KEENE
LEBANON Walking along a
trail in a Delaware wildlife
preserve, Sylvia Royer spied a
frog. With net carefully poised for
attack, she sneaked through the
tall grass and slammed the net
down.
The*frog disappeared into the
grass, but Sylvia’s initial disap
pointment turned to excitement
when she discovered a red velvet
ant entangled in her snare.
Swishing the ant toward the open
end of the net with her hand, Sylvia
deposited it in one of the killing
jars she had stashed in her
daypack.
That red velvet ant is now part of
Sylvia’s extensive insect collec
tion, which includes over 2,000
specimens. She began her insect
collection at a young age,
gathering bugs from her mother’s
vegetable garden on their Lebanon
County dairy farm near Annville.
“I’d go outside in the garden and
find a bug and lode it up,” she
explains.
At first, she took her bugs to
class for show and tell. When she
was 11, she joined the local en
tomology club and learned how to
preserve and display the insects.
Three years ago that club
disbanded, but Sylvia has con
tinued adding to her collection on
her own.
Sylvia has won a number of
awards for her collection. Most
recently, she received an Amateur
Entomologist Award for 1984 from
the Entomological Society of
Pennsylvania. The award
recognizes outstanding
achievements and contributions to
the study of insects by amateurs in
Pennsylvania.
Two years ago her four-member
entomological judging team took
first place at state 4-H days. Her
collection has won first place at the
Hwmesfead
tMotps
Sylvia's insect collecting equipment includes a net and a daypack filled with several
"killing jars.”
farm show four times in the past
five years. One year she had to
settle for second place. This year
she will enter her collection for the
seventh time in the Lebanon Area
Fair, where it has already won five
first-place and one second-place
award.
In the years since show and tell,
Sylvia has learned much about
collecting, identifying and
preserving insects. She still does
much of her collecting around
home, capturing flying insects
with a large net and snaring others
with her killer jars. At night she
sets up a black light and a white
sheet on the balcony of their home.
The light attracts the insects,
which then perch on the white
sheet and are easy to identify and
collect.
Her 4-H club once had a black
light party. “We all just stood
around a black light and waited to
see what would come up,” she
explained. The only difficulty
came, she continued, when more
than one club member wanted a
particular insect.
Sylvia has collected many of her
insects during family camping
trips. While on a vacation to
Florida, she gathered a number of
insects, which she keeps in a
separate case. The diplay she uses
for the Farm Show may include
only insects captured in Penn
sylvania.
Through trial and error, Sylvia
has learned that' visitors are
prohibited from removing insects
from state parks without first
obtaining a license or special
permission from the park rangers.
She said a park ranger once
stopped her while she was out
collecting bugs, but allowed her to
keep her specimens since she was
using them for scientific purposes.
Once she has captured the in
sects, Sylvia said she puts them in
Sylvia Royer, Lebanon, shows off her insect collection that has helped her win a
number of awards, including an Amateur Entomologist Award this year.
To catch an insect resting on a leaf or flower, Sylvia captures them in her “killer jar."
* 1m
a “killing jar” which consists of a
lidded jar containing plaster of
pans soaked with ethyl acetate
and a Kleenex. The fumes kill the
bug within seconds and the Kleenex
protects the insects from harming
themselves.
“It keeps it from beating it’s
wings against the hard plaster,’’
she said.
(Turn to Page B 4)
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Sylvia demonstrates how she would catch a butterfly
overhead along the family's garden, where she first started
collecting insects as a young child.
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