...... and what to do with the abdicating queen.

When taking the old queen out I was wondering what I should do with her. I could not really get myself to just kill her and through her out, so I decided I would try to dry and exhibit her.

First I needed to kill her in a gentle way. I did not have any organic solvents at home so I just figured I would get her drunk in Bacardi :o). I put her in a glass with some beads to lift her from the Bacardi rum in bottom. It took longer than I expected and she was not dead until the next morning.

When I took out the queen she was damp and a bit curled up. The wing was sticking together so I needed to dry her in the position I wanted to exhibit her. A cork, a few pins and some precision work did the job - a pin in the neck, on each side of the body and positioning the legs and wings in a "natural" position.

Hereafter I just left her on a shelf to dry. Also, I did not have a plate to pin her to. I found a good frame in IKEA where the glass was lifted several centimeters from the picture. I found a piece of styrofoam about 1 cm thick and cut out a square which I then covered with a yellow dish washing cloth. This I could use as the surface to pin the queen too. I picked a yellow cloth because the contrast to the dark queen highlighted her details.

And voila!