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The Macleay Collections house over half a million Insect specimens dating from 1756.

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Department of Entomology. has collections that include insects and other terrestrial arthropods: myriapods and arachnids (but not terrestrial crustaceans). The collections include more than 3 million pinned insects plus a similar number of alcohol-preserved specimens; they thus range among the largest in Europe. All regions of the World are covered, but some areas are particularly well-represented. This is true of Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland for all groups; of the Philippine and Bismarck Islands for most insects groups; and of further geographical areas for particular groups as specified below. Important acquisitions are due to recent collecting efforts by staff members in Denmark, Greenland, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Tunisia, Morocco, South India, Thailand, Tanzania and southern Argentina/Chile. A large proportion of the holdings (in particular but not exclusively Danish Lepidoptera and Coleoptera) derive from amateurs' collections which have been donated to the Museum. The number of identified species in the collections totals about 100,000, i.e., about 10% of the described species. There are about 10,500 primary types.
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The Invertebrate Zoology department has a collection of some 200,000 specimens of the world wide collection of Aculeate Hymenoptera (bees and wasps). There are smaller collections of Coleoptera (beetles), Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) and minor collections of most of the other orders of insects. Live insects are being displayed in the Bug Room.

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The entomology collection comprises a large number of subcollections in the field of insects and spiders. The principal collections are those of ants, termites and myrmecophiles, of grasshoppers and crickets and of butterflies.

• Ants, Termites & Myrmecophiles - The collection comprises, in addition to more than 1,000 ant species and in excess of 200 termite species, more than 2,000 species of myrmecophiles. Most specimens are dried but some of them are preserved in alcohol. Also the collection has a unique collection of beetles, butterflies, mites, bugs and aphids which lived in ant nests.
• Grasshoppers and Crickets - This collection is a heterogeneous lot of grasshoppers, crickets, mole crickets, cockroaches, praying mantis, stick insects and leaf insects. The collection comprises no fewer than 129 holotypes and many dozens of paratypes. Some twenty genera and species have been named after Willemse to honour or thank him for his help with identifications. The collection includes a library of 5,000 titles.
• Butterflies - This collection which takes up most of the space in the insect storage is comprised of more than 60,000 specimens, mainly from Limburg and adjacent areas. Together they form an invaluable record of the distribution of the various species over the years and of the variation within the various species
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The Museum houses some 250,000 Lepidopterans specimens and some 100,000 Coleopterans specimens. Also some thousands or tens of thousands are included in the collections of: Hymenoptera, Heteroptera, Diptera, Orthoptera, Homoptera, and Odonata.

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The insect collection numbers c. 250 000 specimens, the majority of which are pinned. Some 14 000 specimens of Thysanoptera are slide-mounted. The largest collection is that of aculeate wasps and bees, numbering c 160 000. The provenance of the specimens is in the main southern African. Some exotic material is included, most notably aculeates from Arizona and Australia. The established field of research of the department is the study of aculeate wasps and bees.
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The Entomology section of the Invertebrate Collections contain the following material:

• Lepidoptera of the world (~57,000)
• Lepidoptera of Switzerland (~125,000; 90 type specimens)
• Coleoptera of Switzerland (~115,200)
• Coleoptera of the world (~16,000, paratype specimens)
• Diptera of Switzerland (~2,000+1,300 samples)
• Odonata of Switzerland (~3,000+13,000 exuvia)
• Hymenoptera of Switzerland (~22,500)
• Hymenoptera of Brazil (1,436, with 100 Adolpho Ducke types and paratypes)
  

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The Insect Invertebrate Collections contain the following material

-Swiss coleopterous (with a holotype)

-Systematic collection of Swiss colepterous

-Systematic collection of butterflies of the world

-Butterflies of the canton of Fribourg
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. The Entomology Department houses some 3,250,000 insect specimens. With the largest collection in the world of grasshoppers and crickets, the Academy's Entomology Department pioneered the placement of a catalog of all known species of a major group of insects on the Internet. The Orthoptera Species File (OSF) provides direct access to data on one of the most economically important species - grasshoppers, perennially one of man's worst competitors for crops. The OSF contains complete taxonomic and synonomic information for all species and genera of Orthoptera, including text, images and sound recordings.
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