Insects Honor

Ask any unit instructor which nature honor gets stuck most often halfway through, and the answer is usually the same: Insects. Not because the theory is hard — it isn't. It's because, in the middle of the requirements, there is one that demands real fieldwork: building a collection of 20 species, from at least six different orders, with each little creature labeled by order and family. That's when the unit discovers that capturing is the easy part.

This guide does not repeat the raw requirement card — you'll find that in the manual. It solves the part that generates searches: how to capture without destroying the specimen, how to dry it so it doesn't mold, how to insert the pin in the right spot, and how to write the two labels so the evaluator doesn't hand the box back. It also shows the path for those who don't want to kill any insect — because it exists and is official.

Requirements verified on 22/07/2026 in the Nature Study sources listed at the end. Where the guidance varies between materials, the text says so.

🐛What does the Insects Honor really require?

Before heading out with the glass jar in hand, understand the design of the honor. It sits in the Nature Study area and mixes two kinds of task: a handful of study questions and a field project. The questions — what defines an insect, which ones are beneficial, which are harmful, two Bible stories — are solved with research and a good conversation in the unit. It's the project that takes time.

The central requirement calls for preparing or photographing a collection with 20 insect species representing, at minimum, six different orders. Two cutoff rules appear right here, and they are worth their weight in gold: moths and butterflies are not accepted (the order Lepidoptera is left out), and broken or poorly presented specimens don't count either. Keep these two lines in mind — they fail more collections than a shortage of specimens.

Notice the word that changes everything: species, not individuals. Twenty different beetles don't complete the honor, because the beetle is a single order (Coleoptera). What the test measures is variety: at least six distinct groups of insects, which forces the Pathfinder to look at the world beyond the obvious.

Besides the collection, the remaining requirements round out the training: describing the characteristics that define an insect, naming five species beneficial to humans, listing five harmful species and how to fight them, and telling two Bible stories in which insects play an important role. It's a set that teaches how to observe, classify, and appreciate — not just to collect.

🔬What is (and what is not) an insect?

This requirement seems silly until it's time to build the collection — and then it saves the unit from a gross mistake. A spider is not an insect. A scorpion is not an insect. Centipedes and millipedes aren't either. If one of those ends up in your box, the six-order requirement falls apart, because none of them is even an insect.

The rule for recognizing a true insect fits in three quick checks of the body, which is divided into head, thorax, and abdomen:

Characteristic	An insect has	Why this rules out the intruders
Legs	3 pairs (6 legs)	A spider has 4 pairs (8 legs) — it's out
Antennae	1 pair	Spiders have no antennae
Wings	1 or 2 pairs (or none, as in the worker ant)	No arachnid has wings
Eyes	Compound, plus simple eyes	Structure typical of the group
Body	3 regions: head, thorax, abdomen	A spider has 2 regions

It's also worth mastering metamorphosis, because it helps you find specimens in the field. Holometabolous insects go through four very different phases — egg, larva, pupa, and adult — like beetles and flies. Hemimetabolous ones have three phases — egg, nymph, and adult — and the nymph already looks like a small, wingless version of the adult, as in the grasshopper and the stink bug. Knowing this keeps you from discarding a nymph thinking it's another creature.

A counselor's tip: build the list of the six orders you're going to look for before collecting. A realistic path in the Brazilian backyard is Coleoptera (beetles), Hymenoptera (ants, bees, wasps), Orthoptera (grasshoppers, crickets), Hemiptera (stink bugs, cicadas), Diptera (flies, mosquitoes), and Odonata (dragonflies). With those six mapped out, reaching 20 species becomes a matter of patience.

🥅How do you capture insects without ruining the specimen?

Here begins the practical part that generates the most questions — and the most collections failed for a poorly presented specimen. Capturing badly throws hours away: one leg missing or a crumpled wing and the specimen is not accepted.

The tools are simple and cheap:

• Entomological net for those that fly — dragonflies, bees, large flies. You can improvise one with a broomstick and tulle.
• Jars and vials for the ground and foliage dwellers, which are caught by hand or with tweezers.
• Killing jar — a closed jar with a bit of cotton soaked in ethyl acetate (acetone-based nail polish remover works as an improvisation). The insect is dispatched quickly and without struggling, which preserves wings and legs. Handle it with an adult: it's a volatile product, use it outdoors and away from small children.

Three precautions that separate the top-grade collection from the one that comes back:

• Don't hold it by the soft body. Large insects are held by the legs or the thorax; squeezing the abdomen crushes everything.
• Note on the spot where and when you caught each one. That information is a label requirement — and it's impossible to reconstruct from memory three weeks later.
• Don't mix the soft ones with the hard ones in the same jar. A large beetle crushes a dragonfly within minutes of transport.

And most importantly, an ethical limit that nature itself is grateful for: collect only what you're going to use. The honor requires 20 species, not a massacre. If you already have the rhinoceros beetle in the box, don't catch five more of the same. Beneficial insects like bees and ladybugs, collect them sparingly — or record them by photo, as the next block shows.

Read alsoRescue of Drowning Honor→

📌How do you dry and mount the collection with a pin?

You've captured it. Now the specimen needs to last — and this is where many beautiful collections rot in the week before evaluation. An insect stored with moisture molds and is attacked by fungi. The solution is to dry it.

Drying removes excess moisture from the body. Entomology materials advise drying in an oven at low temperature, in the range of 40 to 60 ºC, for a few days — no hot oven, which cooks and darkens the specimen. Without an oven, a dry, airy spot protected from dust and ants also works, it just takes longer. Large, fleshy insects (grasshoppers, fat beetles) sometimes require that part of the abdomen's contents be removed so it doesn't rot from the inside.

With the drying done, comes the pinning. Use an entomological pin — the common sewing kind rusts and stains the collection. They come in a numbering that goes from 000 (very fine, for tiny insects) up to 7 (for the big ones); sizes 1 to 4 handle most. The technical detail that almost no one knows: the point where the pin passes through changes according to the insect's order. The general rule avoids piercing identification structures:

Group	Where to insert the pin
Beetles (Coleoptera)	In the right elytron (hard wing), at the front
Stink bugs (Hemiptera)	In the scutellum, in the middle of the back
Grasshoppers (Orthoptera)	In the pronotum, to the right of the central line
Flies and bees	In the thorax, slightly to the right of center
Insects too small	Glued to the tip of a paper triangle, and that is what gets pinned

Everything goes into an entomological box — a shallow box with a foam bottom (or polystyrene), a lid, and preferably something against storage pests. The specimens sit aligned, organized by order and by family, all at the same pin height, which gives the look of a serious collection that the evaluator expects. Naphthalene or a similar product in the corner helps keep other insects from eating your collection — yes, that happens.

🏷️How do you make the two labels by order and family?

This is the most specific requirement and the one that raises the most doubt, so let's take it slowly. Each specimen carries two labels, one below the other, pinned on the same pin as the insect:

Top label — the collection label. It carries three pieces of information: the name of whoever captured it, the date, and the place of capture. It's the label that proves the collection is yours and made in the field, not bought ready-made. Keep it small and legible; entomology materials suggest something close to 6 cm x 2 cm, in tiny lettering.

Bottom label — the identification label. This is where the heart of this requirement enters: the order and the family of that insect. The order is the large group (Coleoptera, Diptera, Hymenoptera…); the family is the subdivision within it (for example, within Coleoptera, the family Coccinellidae of the ladybugs). Reaching the family is what takes work — and what distinguishes the shallow collection from the well-made one.

How do you get the family right without being an entomologist? Three honest paths:

• Identification keys and field guides of insects from Brazil, in a book or a university PDF.
• Photo-identification apps, which give a good starting point — always check the result, because they make mistakes.
• A biology teacher from school or church, who usually loves to help with a project like this.

A practical piece of advice that avoids rework: label as you collect, not all at once at the end. Note the place and date the same day; leave the order and the family for when you have the guide in hand. And check the spelling of the scientific names — they go in italics when typed, with the genus capitalized. Taking care here is what makes the evaluator take the collection seriously.

🐝Which beneficial and harmful insects to name (and the Bible stories)?

Outside the collection box, two requirements close out the honor and are great for a unit meeting. The first calls for five insects beneficial to humans. There's no shortage of real, citable examples:

• Bee — pollinates much of the plants that feed the world and produces honey.
• Ladybug — devours aphids and is used in the biological control of pests.
• Silkworm — the caterpillar that produces the silk thread.
• Parasitoid wasps — control agricultural pests by laying eggs in them.
• Dung beetle — recycles manure and fertilizes the soil.

The second calls for five harmful insects and how to fight them. Here Brazil gives plenty of examples, and it's worth tying the control to public health:

• Aedes aegypti mosquito — transmits dengue, zika, and chikungunya; control by eliminating standing water, the guidance the Ministry of Health repeats every summer.
• Kissing bug (barbeiro) — transmits Chagas disease; control by sealing cracks and improving housing.
• Termite — destroys wood and structures; control with barriers and specialized treatment.
• Weevil — attacks stored grain; control with dry, sealed storage.
• Flea and louse — parasites; control with hygiene and suitable products.

The third requirement is the most beautiful to prepare: two Bible stories in which insects play an important role. Some safe paths:

• The plagues of Egypt (Exodus), with locusts and mosquitoes among them.
• Samson and the swarm of bees that made honey in the lion's carcass (Judges 14).
• The ant as an example of work and foresight, praised in Proverbs 6.
• John the Baptist, who ate locusts and wild honey in the desert (Matthew 3).

Choose two, read the full text with the unit, and talk about the lesson — it's exactly the kind of moment the honor wants to spark, linking the observation of nature to faith.

🚫Without collecting (and the advanced version): what are the ways out?

Not every Pathfinder wants — or is able — to build a collection with dead insects. It may be an ethical restriction, it may be a lack of field time, it may be an allergy. The good news is that the way out is official, not a workaround.

The collection requirement itself offers alternatives to capturing, keeping the requirement of 20 species and at least 6 orders:

• Photographing the 20 species. Great for beneficial insects you don't want to sacrifice, like bees, and for those that fly too fast to collect. The same two identification labels apply to the photo: place/date/author and order/family.
• Drawing or painting the 20 species in color, at natural size or larger. It requires close observation and turns into a beautiful notebook — and it also trains the eye for the details that identify each family.

An honest caveat: some clubs and evaluators prefer the physical collection because it trains field technique. If your instructor has that preference, agree on the format before starting — switching strategy midway costs weeks.

And if the unit wants to go further, there's the Insects Honor — Advanced. It builds on the previous one and goes deeper: the materials indicate adding about 50 insects to the collection, representing at least 10 different orders, plus extra biology content. It's a big jump — only take it on after mastering the basic one, and count on months of collecting, not weeks.

Whatever the path, the official record of the completed honor goes into the SGC, the South American Division's system, and not in any other tool. Club support tools, including Desbravai, help track progress — but validation stays in the SGC, always.