Stag beetles were found breeding in woodchips in a school playground in the Veluwe region. This playground was built 25 years ago, 30 cm deep over a Nicolon membrane. It is topped up every 5 years with fresh woodchips from local hardwood trees. There are stag beetles in this area. Successful "breeding places" have been designed, they are built with aligned vertical poles of decayed oak buried 80 cm deep. For monitoring them all that is needed is to dig a ring around the poles, 60 cm deep, and by hand carefully scrape the soil around the wood. This is not done from June to September so as not to disturb the pupation stage. In one of these, built in 1999 in a Stag beetle area, larvae were found 4 years later.

We have informed about this experience by Paul Hendriks and Maria Fremlin. See their homepages for further details.

Two views of a playgroundg were Stag Beetle larvae were found (Photo: Paul Hendriks).