The German art studio “two lives Einklang” in Hannover was established by Silke Klein and the late Hans Kreich. Besides many other workshops, expositions, and so on, they organized a great art contest in 2003, titled “Hier brummt’s…” (Here it buzzes), which was entirely centered around cockchafers. They prepared almost 2000 clay tiles in cockchafer form and participants could work with these using various techniques. This resulted in an impressive display of ceramic cockchafers that stretched out over 14 square meters.

The art studio still produces and sells blank ceramic cockchafers, that can be painted or otherwise artistically processed. I wrote about these in an earlier blog post.

This was the final blog post in the COCKCHAFER 1.5 WEEK series. I hope you liked it.

Photos: Silke Klein, used with permission

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Silke Klein’s ceramics art studio and gallery “two lives Einklang” in Hannover, Germany, sells ceramic tiles in cockchafers shape. (They can also be ordered through the internet, but they only ship within Germany). The idea is, that you can paint or color them according to your own ideas.

If you don’t have any ideas, the pictures on webshop “twolives” may give you some.

They are also suitable for creative activities with children.

Three cockchafers, about 5-6 inch long, cost only €4,50 (+ Shipping cost/not outside Germany).

Source:
3 keramische Maikäfer, www.vondir.de/tools/view?id=26532
Photos used with permission.

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From Wikipedia:

In 1320, […] cockchafers were brought to court in Avignon and sentenced to withdraw within three days onto a specially designated area, otherwise they would be outlawed. Subsequently since they failed to comply, they were collected and killed.

Source:
Cockchafer on Wikipedia

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Some cockchafers have a life cycle of three years while other cockchafers live four or five years. In a Czech study published in the Journal of Forest Science in 2006, the following phenomenon was reported:

Four four-year and three three-year tribes are found in the Czech Republic. The dividing line between the four-year and three-year tribes is the 50-year average air temperature of 14°C during the vegetation period (April–September). Regions where the temperatures are higher are populated with three-year tribes and the colder regions with four-year tribes.

Cycles of five years can be found in Southern Scandinavia.

It is surprizing that the number of cockchafers flying in spring varies so strongly. If the life cycle is four years, every fourth year many more cockchafers can be observed than in the in-between years. Somehow the cockchafers that live in the same area synchronize their life cycle. Perhaps grouping together in very large swarms increases their chances of survival. Fluctuations in numbers are not uncommon in species with many natural enemies.

The disappearance of the cockchafer in the second half of the 20th century has often been attributed to the use of pesticides. However, these were probably just one of the factors. The Czech report that I cited above reports

In the second half of the 20th century the population density decreased in the major part of the country and the pest was on the verge of extinction as a result of changed technologies in agriculture.

To combat the cockchafer pest, prize money was awarded for killed cockchafers. The Swiss researcher Decoppet looked at the accounts of money payed for cockchafer hunting, and discovered that the cockchafer population rose to unusual heights every thirty or forty years.

A few records:

• In 1911, more than 20 million individuals were collected in 18 km² of forest.
• In 1939, in the Hessischen Bergstraße, 300 Zentner (15,000 kg) cockchafers were collected. That is about 18 million animals.
• In 1951, even a billion (1,000,000,000) cockchafers were collected in Vienna. They turned them into chicken feed.

Source:
- Distribution of tribes of cockchafers of the genus Melolontha in forests of the Czech Republic and the dependence of their swarming on temperature, M. Švestka, Journal of Forest Science, 52, 2006 (11): 520–530
- Meikever, insectconsultancy.nl
- Cockchafer on Wikipedia
- Ein leises Rieseln, Berliner Zeitung, 2004-05-08

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Back in the times when toys were scarse and cockchafers were abundant, children used to collect and play with them. Cockchafers feed on tree leaves, so an easy method to catch them was to shake a young tree. Many cockchafers would drop out of the tree and could be picked up from the ground. It was an honor to have collected the greatest number of cockchafers.

For another game, children attached a thread to a leg and let it fly as a self-propelling kite. Clearly, the pleasure was not on the side of the beetle.

I read another story that described how children would hold a cockchafer in the hollow of their hands, sing a little song, open their hands, and watch if the beetle would fly away. Often a special song was sung to stimulate the beetle to fly.

In Germany, since the Thirty Years’ War in the first half of the 17th Century, children sang the following song:

Maikäfer flieg…
Dein Vater ist im Krieg
Deine Mutter ist in Pommerland
Pommerland ist abgebrannt
Maikäfer flieg!

Translation:

Cockchafer fly…
Your father is at war
Your mother is in Pomerania
Pomerania is all aflame
Cockchafer fly!

(In the Thirty Years war, Pomerania was pillaged and suffered heavily.)

Sources:
Wikipedia
Meikever (Dutch)

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Yesterday at dusk, I saw 10 to 20 cockchafers flying about the Golden Elm in my garden. This may be a good cockchafer year.

I reported the sighting on waarneming.nl: http://waarneming.nl/waarneming/view/42788030

The English name of the cockchafer is a combination of a word for rooster (cock) and a word for beetle (chafer). Wikipedia mentions several other English names for the creature though: may bug, billy witch, or spang beetle.

These names would be more common in East Anglia. Soule’s Dictionary of English Synonyms mentions: May-bug, dor, dor-bug, tree-beetle, dor-beetle, May-beetle, dummador. However, I think the names with ‘dor’ actually refer to another family of beetles, the Geotrupidae or earth-boring dung beetles. Those beetles are sometimes confused with the cockchafer.

In many languages, the name of this beetle signifies simply “beetle of may”, for example, Maikäfer (German), meikever (Dutch), maaituorre (West-Frisian), Chrabąszcz majowy (Polish).

The West Low German version of Wikipedia has quite a collection of regional names or nicknames from the Eastern part of the Netherlands: ekkelfrans, ekkeltinus, ekkeltôkse, ekkelworm, oakenbrood, ekkelteve, ekkeltieuwe, bromworm, ekkelbrommer, eekmulder, ekkelbieter, ekkelmot, iekenmulder, iekmulder, mulder, törrewever, torrewever, romeslaper.

Many of these names refer to oak trees (eek, iek, or ekkel), some are based on the buzzing sound of a cockchafer (bromworm, ekkelbrommer), and several name the insect miller (mulder). The name mulder can be explained by the fact that a cockchafer sometimes seems to be dusted with flour, just like a miller that grinds a cereal crop to make flour.

You can see this in the folowing photo.

The French name is hanneton or hanneton commun. I believe this means ‘big beetle’, etymologically. In Romance languages, such as French and Italian, you can find remnants of the suffix -on, which means ‘big’. You find the same suffix in the name of the musical instrument a bassoon. This comes from from the French basson, from the Italian bassone, which means, “a big low instrument.” (Bass = ‘low.’)

Photos taken by: Beentree
License: GNU Free Documentation License
For more details, click on the photos to go to the information pages.

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