Trapping pheromonal components with silicone rubber tubes: fatty acid secretions in honeybees (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Apis mellifera</Emphasis>)

Summary. We describe the use of pieces of silicone tubing to analyse the mandibular gland components of queen and worker honeybees and show that these compounds can be efficiently trapped on bis(trimethylsilyl)trifluoroacetamide (BSTFA) treated pieces of tubing. The use of this technique rather than that of solid phase microextraction (SPME) techniques with commercially available fibres that have been shown to be efficient at sampling secretions from the cuticle of insects, is necessitated by a requirement for collection of large sample numbers in a short space of time or for sampling in the field. The technique may be generalised for use with semiochemicals of low volatility in other insect communciation systems.