Figure 1. The Eastern View of the museum on our first day, after walking in from the South Kensington Tube Station

Hi! We are Baxter and Lucas, Undergraduate Students at Swansea University on placement at The Natural History Museum in London. We work supervised by Wasp Expert Dr. Gavin Broad in the Hymenopteran Collection as Curatorial Assistants.

This Opportunity opened itself up to us in early November of 2024, when looking over at the options for our placement year. I (Baxter) heard about it first when Wendy Harris informed me of the placement during a volunteering opportunity at Swansea Science Festival, once I knew about it, I was determined to get it!

A couple weeks would pass, leading up to an informal interview process, where Gavin Broad would ask questions about our current knowledge, interests, and experience to each of the applicants. It gave us a good opportunity to ask our own questions about what life was like at the museum, and what different projects we could find ourselves working on.

And a couple weeks later, we both got that fateful email that confirmed our placement, to start within the next year. But for the next few months we had to knuckle down, complete our second years, and then we could look forward to this exciting opportunity

Having been here now for almost three months, we’ve undertaken many important tasks, including but not limited to:

• Organising the 11,000 drawers within the collection
• Processed specimens in preparation for their integration into the collection
• Validated Taxonomies within the Universal Chalcidoidea database 
• Collected Type Specimens from the main collection, preparing them for special storage (Fig 2)
• Sifted through the contents of 4 Malaise Traps from Herefordshire, organising them into Orders (Fig 3)

Fig 2. A Collection of Vespinae Type Specimens, in their own organised collection

Fig 3. The Contents of one malaise trap collected from Herefordshire, quite an intimidating pile!

But our highlights include

• Tours of the Coleopterans (Beetles) (Fig 4), Small Orders (Including Grasshoppers, Dragonflies, Stick Insects and More!)
• Seeing a (Ex-)Guinness World Record Holder (Fig. 5)
• Finding Specimens collected by Charles Darwin! (Fig 6)
• A whistlestop tour of the wet specimen collection (Including seeing the Giant Squid, Coelacanths, the worlds largest Earthworm and Charles Darwins pet tortoise!) (Fig 7,8)

Figure 4. One of the Display Drawers within the Coleoptera Collections

Figure 5. The (Ex) World Record Holder for the longest insect in the world, Chan’s Megastick, Beaten now by the Giant Chinese Stick Insect

Figure 6. A parasitoid wasp collected by Charles Darwin, possibly one of his most hated organism!

Figure 7. Charles Darwins pet tortoise, preserved in all their beauty!

Figure 8. Myself (Baxter) taking a photo with the preserved Giant Squid Archie! (Definitely a bucket list moment!!)

Currently we are excitedly awaiting a new project to tackle, and we will be sure to document and photograph any future projects that we work on! We hope to update this blog every two weeks, and we hope you’ll follow this entomological adventure alongside us!

Authors: Baxter Walters-Hutton and Lucas Aucock