How to Grow Bug Spray

this video is sponsored by blue apron growing up in Minnesota the winters can kind of suck very cold and lots of snow but at least the summers here are amazing except when the bugs come out from around May through October but besides that it's super awesome those two weeks a year are really great usually going outside in the summer but some kind of insect repellent was unimaginable and recipe for horrible experience but how do these repellents even work and how could you make one yourself to find out I can use a few plants I'm growing in my garden and attempt to make my own it takes millions of specialized skilled experts around the world to produce the kamas items we use every day but could an average person do everything to make all these items alone well that's what I try to attempt my name is Andy and this is how to make everything bugs like mosquitoes track down their prey through a few methods smell sight and heat their biggest clue is a smell where they can smell co2 exhaled by the prey as well as several other compounds these smells can help them find a host from ten to fifty meters away and bug spray helps protect you by masking these clues with their own chemical compounds hearing you nearly invisible to the mosquitoes and other bugs a few different plans are knowing of being able to offer this masking in addition to synthetic compounds like DEET so I collected as many potential plants as I could help extract they're helpful elements I've collected a few different plants here that are potentially used for bug repellent I have some citronella I have some basil from my closet garden I have some lemongrass so I'm rosemary from my garden and some catnip the Dobby helped me track down now the next step is to actually extract the chemicals in each of these plants it acts as a bug repellents do that by basically making essential oil of each of these plants this is the exact same process I went through before when I attempted to extract government oil for my toothpaste except I have the right equipment and it all got messed up didn't work at all I'm a biomass flask that is a much more appropriate size a whole different distillation setup that seals a lot better and then a stronger water pump so I can actually pump it from the right direction hopefully it all work out now and basically going to do scheme distillation and a boil and distilled water down here it's gonna go through the plant mash and the bio plas it's gonna capture all the essential oils although then condensate but then I'll have essential oils and be able to make one bug spray [Music] after distilling I poured it into a separating funnel separate the extracted essential oils from the watery hydrosol [Music] [Music] now they have a few possible essential oils that should hopefully be bug repellent now I just need to print into actual bug spray I'm here with John who makes his own bug cream what's the basic ingredients that you use I use two basic I use coconut oil which you can buy at any grocery store I use beeswax I use shea butter so I haven't made my own shea butter does it possible substitute that with like cocoa butter it should be fine both are very good at holding scent so they're good with any kind of essential oils and then I use a mix of essential oils it's a combination of equal parts of citronella and eucalyptus so basically you just melt everything and put it in a cup and pour it in jars pretty easy process it's wonderful for your skin it just happens that these essential oils keep bugs away so I've had it tested in India and in Jamaica and in Alaska and extensively in Minnesota compare is just as good to commercial brands right and the nice thing is because of the ingredients we use it's safe for kids how long is each it lasts depending on your body chemistry two to three hours so you do have to reapply it just want to demonstrate to me how you would mix this all together then the shea butter is probably liquid enough I pour that in first I use four ounces of coconut oil and it's kind of gloppy but we'll be melting it before we pour it we need to melt the wax that we may want to do in the microwave and you also add that to the mixture what that does is it keeps it solid at room temperature so it makes it portable and then I also add the essential oil both happen on the court rounds Terron and then that should be melted one more time to make sure the wax is thoroughly melted Rangers portman go to it both set up in about ten to fifteen minutes John also mentioned his recipe for an actual spray version that just needs the essential oils water and some alcohol I also want to try that so next only to distill some alcohol but first a word from our sponsor normally there's not much time in our schedule to make a healthy meal but thanks to blue apron now it's possible for us to make a healthy meal that's quick tasty and from scratch what a concept blue apron delivers all the farm-fresh ingredients you need right to your doorstep 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make crab grass beer that did not turn out the greatest it's pretty disgusting it smells worse than it tastes but it also doesn't taste good so I'm gonna try and salvage it so I can distill up the alcohol and use it for other projects so I have a distillation kit here and it's actually a new kit that allows a fractal distillation so using a thermometer to gauge the temperature of what's coming out of it I can tell when it's methanol or ethanol and the methanol is potentially toxic if you drink it so once the temperature starts to raise above the boiling point of methanol I can then just toss out everything that's come out and just get ethanol ultimately it's not really that important because it's gonna be used topically but I had a new kit so I wanna try it out double distilled let's test a little bit make sure it's least over 50% alcohol wasn't fun but which means it's over fifty percent water so distill it once more something that giant jug of beer this is about all the alcohol that there was so after three distillations have something that's at least fifty percent alcohol I would estimate the less than one percent which was a well within the non-alcoholic beer range still has a slight hint of that awful smell so hopefully doesn't attract any bugs so I have all the essential oils I've extracted they ended up being pretty traced I'm just gonna go mine all of them and do one mixed component at the topical cream here to add to it just ready to mix it in it's made of beeswax cocoa butter and coconut oil I'm hoping with all of mine I have enough to make both the topical cream and then also use some my alcohol to make a bug spray I'm curious how effective each of these individual essential oils are so I bought some store-bought ones that can also make some creams just so I can test and see what is the most effective available lastly I have the citronella from the citronella plant I was curious why I didn't get a yard yield it's like one of the smallest ones and I looked it up and it's actually apparently a whole myth that despite this being sold as a mosquito plant it does not contain the actual stitch mallow oil citronella oil that you use in actual bug spray comes from the lemongrass that was surprising alright let's get started pretty close ten for the bug spray have some more oil that I saved and I have the ethanol alcohol that I distilled produce just enough I'm going to add that a tablespoon to half a cup of water add to this little spray bottle I don't think I spilled enough no no he doesn't know what he's doing was really good yeah nothing else it makes good Cologne now I just need to field-test my bug repellents and see how well they work for my best bet I decided to go to one of the most mosquito ridden areas we've previously filmed at the Minnesota Valley Wildlife Refuge it's one on the camera to have my spray and cream repellent on my left side of my body right side is all-natural for control and I will see which side gets more bites Joey and Chris are gonna try out all the other essential oils and see if they can find the difference between them look at all that blood he's collected for me or she she's I think it was huge I got a couple of bites before putting them on weird oh he's getting way in there I don't like this yeah I got a bite on this finger why don't we smear some lavender up and down here again I heard basil beforehand I had gotten bit a few times I don't want to get bit again but I will because I always get bit because you're so sweet so so sweet that's my mama always said I just get bit more than most people do I don't know why which ones are you trying on it was married and afterwards saw a couple of mosquitos land and then fly off oh god there's one right mosquito landed on the basilar mediately after landing on it it took off he doesn't like basil or lavender it seemed like the scent of the basil wore off a little sooner than the lavender the lavender still smells good so the interesting thing is that the temperature dropped just this week and that's made the mosquitos a lot less aggressive the bugs are out and they are biting just not as fierce as they normally are the bug spray I made myself appears to be working I think they were effective I would definitely go with the lavender the basil just makes you smell a little too delicious they work where all the story is rub catnip all over your body I haven't gotten a single bite on this arm or the side of my body or this side I've gotten several bites and at least moderately effective this isn't quite as effective a test that I wanted so I think I'm gonna try and order a batch of research mosquitos looks like a few weeks and then put put it to a more controlled test and maybe get some more accurate numbers on this if you enjoyed this video be sure to subscribe and check out other content we have covering a wide variety of topics also if you enjoyed these series consider supporting us on patreon we are largely a fan funded channel and 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Channel: How To Make Everything

Views: 264,921

Keywords: HTME, DIY, Fun, Smart, Learn, Teach, Maker, History, Science, Innovator, Education, Educational, School, Invention, Agriculture, Textiles, Industry, Technology, bug spray, deet, insect repellent, spray, cream, essential oil, mosquitos, flies, fly, bug, bother, annoy, bite, sting, prevention, cat nip, catnip, cat, lemon grass, basil, lavender, rosemary, Citronella, Grass, organic bug spray, diy bug spray, how to make bug spray, homemade bug spray, keep bugs away, natural bug spray, brow tidy ox, how to make everything

Id: 8yLXhUmEENQ

Length: 11min 52sec (712 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 31 2018