General worm handling question

Hi, I’m doing some chemotaxis work right now and am curious how people have solved this specific step: After incubating/washing/collecting the worms to be exposed to gradient plates, I pellet the worms and remove as much supernatant as possible, then using glass pipette, transfer to gradient plate. The timer needs to begin as close to when they get on the plate as possible. However, to the best of my ability, there is still going to be a droplet of solution that the worms swim around in. I can’t leave it to evaporate because my chemotaxis length is only 30 minutes and I’m concerned this will really interfere with results. The only thing I’ve come up with is soaking up the residual fluid with kimwipe segments. Problem is that the worms like to stick and plug I’m sure it doesn’t make them very happy to be dabbed like that.
Any insights into what other people have done in similar situations? Picking them is a possibility, but I’d like to run ~100 worms per gradient and really I can’t pick 100 worms from no lawn in less than a couple minutes.