Two scarabeid beetles, Anthracophora rusticola Burmeister and Protaetia brevitarsis (Lewis), and two lepidopteran species, Niditinea baryspilas (Meyrick) (Tineidae) and Orthopygia glaucinalis (Linnaeus) (Pyralidae), were recorded in five nests of the Oriental Stork, Ciconia boyciana Swinhoe, in Toyooka, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan. This is the first report of insect fauna in Oriental Stork nests, with the first records of P. brevitarsis from bird nests and of0. glaucinalis from bird nests in Japan. The larvae of the scarabaeids and the tineid probably fed on plant matters (e.g. decaying twigs and leaves) and animal matters (e.g. remnants of food, bird feces, and pellets) in the nests, and the pyralid fed on plant matters. Eighty-four earthen cocoons of A. rusticola and 153 of P. brevitarsis were discovered in a single nest, confirming that the scarabaeids were closely associated with the stork nests.

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Several Ensliniellinae mites have been reported mainly as parasitic species of eumenine solitary wasps. No ensliniellines have been known from eusocial wasps except for Sphexicozela connivens in Hungary, which has been recorded as a scavenger in nests of Polistes wasps. We found an identified species of Sphexicozela on P. snelleni workers and gynes from colonies collected in Nagano Prefecture, central Japan. This is the first record of Sphexicozela from a Japanese social wasp. All mites that we found were of deutonymphal (phoretic) stage, and attached to the inner surfaces of tergites or sternites of adult wasps.

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Fecundity and longevity of the sorghum plant bug, Stenotus rubrovittatus, were examined at 25℃ and under a photoperiod of 16L-8D. The adults that were less than 24 hours old were reared on wheat seedlings. Females began to lay eggs 3 days after emergence, and the mean number of eggs per female reached a peak of 13.1 after 9 days. The mean fecundity was 132.7 eggs per female. Females and males lived for an average of 22.2 and 13.0 days, respectively. Females lived longer than males.

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Alate individuals of a tropical fire ant, Solenopsis geminata, were found by the first author on the ship "Ogasawara-maru", which traveled from Chichi-jima (the Ogasawara Islands) to Tokyo. This harmful species is known to occur in Japan, but records have hitherto been limited to isolated islands such as Iwo-jima (the Ogasawara Islands) and Okinawa-jima (the Ryukyu Islands). Since the liner anchored close to Iwo-jima just before that cruise, when it was possible that individuals of the species flew onboard. The discovery suggests the likelihood that the ant has been unintentionally introduced to Chichi-jima and even to the mainland of Japan.

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Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Government of Japan has overseas study programs which send curators and art officials abroad to improve their abilities and broaden their experiences. I joined in this program from November 2006 to March 2007, and learned the techniques and the rules of collection management at Zoological Museum, University of Amsterdam (ZMA) and some other museums in the Netherlands. ZMA houses about eight million entomological specimens from all over the world. Although the number of the proper staff at the museum seems to be too small for the huge collection, the collection is kept in good condition. In ZMA, "honorary staff" and scientists outside the museum called "regular visitors" play an important role in collection management. Owing to their collaboration, ZMA constructed the huge collection and made it possible to manage the collection with a small staff of members. They do not only visit the museum for their own researches, but they also sort, identify, and even donate specimens of their specialty, and help collection management of the museum in many ways. In this report, I describe the way of collection management in ZMA, and their activities to maintain the cooperative relationship with collaborators.

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The website "Museum of Bees, Wasps and Ants" (http://www.hitohaku.jp/insect-museum/index.html), which received the 2005 Japan Entomological Society Akitsu Prize, was established on the home page of Museum of Nature and Human Activities, Hyogo for the purpose of encouraging scientific research and promoting general interest about bees, wasps and ants. The website consists mainly of introductory pages for the hymenopteran studies, a database of specimens and archives that document the research activities of Drs. Iwata, Tuneki and Sakagami, who are three great hymenopterists in Japan. At present, all field notes and sketches of the three hymenopterists have been scanned and saved as tiff files and over 1300 pages of the notes and sketches have been uploaded on the website.

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