It does seem as though he is stretching the truth in some of his stories.
I’ve had bees but sadly none now and I agree, we haven’t seen any application for his discoveries in this area.
The interview, nonetheless, is worth a listen for those who might not have an appreciation for the fungal world. I did not really until I developed an interest and read many books and such.
This thread has rekindled my interest in teaching mycology. I created and inoculated some PDA agar plates. I have the benefit of access to an autoclave and sterile flow hood and took many pics for a possible class. However, for home experimentation, we generally use a still air box (SAB) or a glove box. So now I’m thinking about building a SAB / glove box and duplicating my efforts without the use of the autoclave or laminar flow device. I have not built a SAB before. Just watched a couple of videos. Pretty simple but I’m asking for tips from anyone who has done this. I’ll document construction as well as the implementation and compare to the high(er) tech way of doing things then in a few weeks I can compare the results.
Please offer suggestions, bearing in mind that my point here is to document things for teaching at DMS at a later date.
Also keep in mind that agar is not the simplest way to start. I think my spore source may not be very clean and I may need to isolate the desired fungus from others as well as bacteria. Hence my choice of agar.
Once we can achieve a ‘sterile’ spore source then we can use techniques that go straight from spore to grain. So keep in mind when making suggestions for the SAB. I would like to do agarless tech as well but I have no experience in that yet - PFtech, etc
I used as still air box that I made out of a clear plastic tote. I found that when I added gloves it pushed and pulled air in and out with every movement, just having a couple of holes in front side just a bit bigger than your fore arms is good enough. My procedure was more or less was:
1, The night before I planned on doing the noccing up I’d mix up the substrates and run the pressure cookers while I deep cleaned the bathroom( one thing my ex wife really liked about my playing mycologist) then shut them off without touching the cans.
2. The next morning seal off any potential drafts in the bathroom, spray down all the surfaces with a bleach solution then go wash my hands and carrying in the now cooled but still sealed PCs the SAB and any other equipment I was using into the bathroom and spray a good heavy cloud of Lysol and carefully shut the door.
3 while waiting for the cloud to settle go wash up and change into clean clothes (I’m not going to say a lab coat is REQUIRED, but the clothes make the man) I skip gloves but a mask is a good idea.
4. Once you gently slip into the room try and use slow deliberate movements to avoid stirring up the air as much as possible. wipe down the inside of the glove box with 70% rubbing alcohol and then do the same with the jars and plates from the PCs and stack them on the upside down lid and carefully put the top on then give inside the box a quick shot of Lysol.
5. While waiting for that to settle review in your mind the steps and motions you’ll be taking in a few moments, try to plan things out for a minimum of movements and especially to avoid needing to cross over any open plates or jars.
6. If you decide to use flame to sterilize needles or blades make sure you keep your lighter/candle/alcohol lap OUTSIDE the glove box, I’ve caught more than one on fire, sometimes slightly explosively (well a big scary WHUMP anyways) and lost all the hait om my hands and forearms because I didn’t let them evaporate fully before lighting the lighter. Also have an extinguisher handy, or you can skip that risk and just have a dish of alcohol soaked paper towels to wipe things down as you go to avoid cross contamination.
7. Do your work and then seal things back up.
Some of that might be a bit excessive, but it’s what worked for me.
Some great tips, Adam. Thank you for all that.
Not excessive at all. There is a lot of mystery in mycology sometimes as to why things work or fail. I found myself doing the same, being excessively careful because I wanted to rule out or at least limit the likelihood of failure from things that might be preventable. We just about need a positive pressure clean room. One could possibly do that with a blower through a hepa filter but that would need to run continuously to keep contaminants out of the room. Oops, forgot about the HVAC . . . That would be a problem in that room. Maybe precool the house then shut down the A/C while you work.
While we are on the topic, here is something pretty cool with an insane amount of UV light output for sterilizing hospital rooms and ORs. Set the thing up, put a warning on the door and turn it on for about 20 minutes.
photos.app.goo.gl/mavXTiKHFAPzg4lm1
Good tips on leaving out the gloves on the box. Yes that could suck air in and out. Unless you had a 0.3 micron low resistance filtered air vent on the box and a great seal. One video shows the use of weather stripping along the box top. I think that if you repeatedly alcohol your hands then they achieve a really good level of sterility. Wash then alcohol then whenever you think about it reapply the alcohol.
A buddy of mine reported good results with something that he says was his own creation. He put some sort of small ‘air cleaner’ with HEPA filter onto the SAB to create a constant positive pressure / air flow. I forgot what he used but it was some sort of small ‘room air cleaner’ that would never have been effective at clearing a whole room but was more than enough for a SAB. He reported really low contamination. He somehow rigged a hose to the output. Wondering if one could find a cheap HEPA filtered vacuum cleaner and run the blower side into a box with a hose. Throttle the motor power a bit with a variac or electronic speed controller.
I see these at Costco on sale from time to time. They do move a lot of air and claim to have a sub micron filter. Might be good for general room air cleaning in a small, sealed, positive pressure room.
I’ve seen some interesting designstuff like you mentioned with adding a filtered forced air box. My one attempt at the time to build an actual sealed system like that suffered from a lack of woodworking skills, lack of proper tools, and being cheap on materials.
As far as using a room airfilter in the closed room my understanding is its a bad idea unless you are going to go ALL out on making it a clean room with a clean dressing room and airlock type chamber. The reason being that air movement in the room will stir up anything you end up bringing in with you or the buggers that managed to escape the chemical assault and the mechanical effect of the mist settling dust out of the air. The laminar flow hood (and the low tech option of working on the open door of a hot oven) avoids this problem by keeping the hepa cleaned (or heat sterilized) air moving across the work area preventing spores from settling on the work.
Yeah, a DIY lami flow box or device could be a great project for an advanced class. Totally a DMS wood shop project.
Like the oven idea!
Just thought I’d leave this here…
i really wish it was an easy solution. but fungi doesnt grow year round in certain climates etc so its def not a one size fits all cure like he would hope. he also has yet to provide actual scale able formula for treatments other than my bees drink water from fungus and are perfect. the virus isnt the issue the varroa are the issue causing the virus.
Agree with the lack of practical application for some of his stuff.
I wanted to design a tiny hive bug zapper (that would exclude bees) for them but never did.
Oops that was for hive beetles - another annoying pest.
