Stag beetles

[rallye101]

Anyone else's kids collecting these little beasts at the minute? It's strictly catch and release with us....they are awesome things

[Nightmare]

I think they have to be on the inside of the thing to count as ‘collected’. What we actually appear to have there is 5 stag beetles who have collected a fabric box!

I love them but they just aren’t around where I live sadly. Grew up in Surrey and had loads in the garden and we used to catch and count each year. Always enjoyed watching the worlds sketchiest flying as well

[Dr Mike Oxgreen]

If you want stag beetles in your garden, you need rotting wood. That’s what the larvae feed on before turning into adults.

When we moved into our house, there was a large dead willow tree in the middle of the back garden. We promptly had it taken down because it was at risk of falling, however we didn’t have the stump ground out and obviously all the roots stayed under the lawn.

This had two effects:
1) There were always stag beetles for the first five years of living here. And if we dug down to those roots, we’d find big fat larvae living on them.

2) We suffered occasional random deaths of shrubs and trees, with characteristic symptoms of honey fungus. I think the rotting roots were harbouring it.

We’ve now been here for about 16 years, and the rotting roots are probably long gone. We haven’t seen a stag beetle for years, and also haven’t had a confirmed honey fungus death for a while either.