Acarine Thoracic Dissection

[Myfamily&otheranimals]

Hi,
I am attempting to practice dissection to expose the 1st thoracic trachea to look for evidence of acarine infestation.
My problem is 50 % of the time when removing the head I also remove the trachea leaving exposed only the flight muscles or torn trachea.
If I manage to remove the head leaving the trachea intact then I am usually able to remove the collar and expose the trachea successfully.

I have tried removing the head in various ways but cannot do it successfully consistently. Does anyone have any tips?
My usual method of attempting head removal is securing the bee onto a piece of cork with an acarine needle through the lower half of the thorax between the middle and hind legs and with the forceps catching the fore legs in the forceps as one blade of forceps goes under chin and the other blade across the top of the head and then twist the head off backwards. I'm just getting through so many bees with so many failed attempts and it's so frustrating.
Thanks in advance.

 

[drex]

Are the bees fresh? I found it makes a big difference. I twist the head and then slide to side. Good result 9out of 10. It takes practice.

 

[Myfamily&otheranimals]

I've tried with fresh killed and day and 2 day old. Never tried sliding head to side, will try that, thanks.

 

[Edwardking]

Try using frozen bees that have had 2 hours to thaw.

 

[Myfamily&otheranimals]

Cheers will give it a go.

 

[Myfamily&otheranimals]

Just to let the interested know and maybe help others who resurrect this thread in the future and are having similar problems.
I have finally mastered decapitating the bees. I was concentrating too much on rolling the head back and not pulling upwards at the same time. I think I must have been dragging to far back and removing the 1st Trachea with the head. I have found if I pull upwards sharply at the same time as rolling the head backwards I have success 9.5 times out of 10.
As simple as that.

 

[rayz_x]

I did this for the first time yesterday on an excellent course with Graham Royle.
After getting it wrong a lot of times I worked out that pulling off the head seemed to take too much of the attached parts with it. I eventually used the small spring 'scissors' (there's probably a technical name) to cut off the head. This leaves on the front legs and 'collar' which can be removed more slowly. Sometimes the trachea start to come away with the legs and collar but you can see that happening and inspect the trachea, which is the object of the exercise.

Ray