Much of the beetle drawer lids are quite to very dirty. The CollAction team has been working on the beetle drawers, producing many dirty black wipes, and clean glass covers. And occasionally we come across beetle gems.
Dirty stateof the drawers
For years, insect drawers were stored at the collector's house, in a storage and in the depot. After decades, the settled dust and dirt makes for black hands when handling such a drawer. Much of the drawer lids are quite to very dirty for that reason. On the outside it is covered in dust/soot, the insides are covered with grease from the beetles. Especially the filthy outside is not pleasant when working in the collection.
A task forhalf a year
We are tackling the beetle collection on the eighth floor in the depot tower. It involves 16,000 drawers in nearly 700 cabinets. The CollAction team has been working on this job for five months now. Because you can only work in the depot for 2 hours a day, we work on this task until coffee break. The team works briskly and gets almost 25 drawers per hour per person. At this rate, we will finish the job in half a year.
Gems hiddenbetween beetles
This way we handle the whole collection, and often we see the most beautiful beetles. The golden beetles we come across look like gems, and almost are: they have been sprayed gold in order to make electron microscopy photographs of them. So they are not king beetles as we first thought!
