I started a local garden bug collection a few weeks ago. So far, I’ve managed to collect a female stage beetle, a lubber grasshopper, two golden paper wasps, and some neat leaf-footed bugs. I’ve been doing some research and it seems that there is a high level of geekery amongst this hobby. I’m in it more for my amateur naturalist tendencies than for any hard scientific value of the collection. A few sites seem to make out that it is a cardinal sin to not label your collection appropriately, but I just like to look at the bugs. So anyone else keep a casual insect collection?
I also see from GQ you’ve added a tomato hornworm to your collection.
No, I will not provide a link to one. :eek:
Do you mean pinned in a display case? Or live in a tank? Your comment about labelling has me confused.
Yeah, in my PANTS!
Wait, what was the question again?
oh, wait. I just figured out that you don’t mean those of us who just happen to live in an old house.
I guess I should un-subscribe from the “does anyone else collect Gekko eggs thread too.”
Pinned in a case.
I’ve been an insect collector for most of my life; by any reasonable standard, I’m an amateur. 
Since I lost my childhood collection when I went off to college (lack of maintenance and hungry dermestid beetles destroyed it), I restarted from scratch in 1995 or thereabouts.
I do try to keep reasonable data labels on my specimens, since they’re often “souvenirs” of various vacations I’ve been on over the years! (Better than snowglobes, IMO. 
)
I’m probably not a fair judge of the “geekery” quotient in this hobby, though. 
I objected to just such a project for my entomology class due to ethical objections, if it involved killing an otherwise healthy insect (as opposed to locating one which was already dead but not smooshed or anything). They eventually allowed me to cobble together insect parts to create “Frankenbugs”, replete with faux yet plausible life histories. After that it became an official alternative for the course.
My son and I are starting one this weekend! We’ve moved to the sticks from the city so my kids are having a wonderful time looking at all the insects. We decided to start a collection. So far we have two types of grasshopper, a hornet, a red velvet ant, a false wasp, a rhinocerous beetle and a cicada. They are not labeled yet but we will once we start pinning them.
Yay bugs!
I really, really like this idea. This is right up my alley as a sculptor. 
Not deliberately, no.
Not deliberately, no.
If you ever have a glass display case on one wall of your study, with a bunch of insects in it, and one is missing, and you also have another display case on the opposite wall with a bunch of fly-fishing lures and one of them is missing, find the missing objects and put them in their proper places. All of the water will drain out of the fish tank, and then you can push it out of the way and there’s a box of flame rounds for the grenade launcher hidden behind it.
snerk thanks, I needed that.
I don’t collect insects now, but I used to. In fact, it was a requirement when I was taking my systematics class for my master’s in the Dept. of Entomology at my old university.
If I had a net, I’d be collecting now. Anyone know where to get a good insect net in Berlin?
I still have the 50-year-old collection I had as a kid. Hundreds of specimens, mostly butterflies and moths, that you just don’t see anymore . . . all labeled. The wings still look great, but some of the bodies have decomposed.