Hirschfeld is a village in the German state of Brandenburg, with just over a thousand inhabitants. Not much exciting happens during the day, but that changes around 9 pm. “Then they come,” resident Klaus-Peter Schlesinger (85) tells Bild.
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He refers to the many beetles who infiltrate houses in the village through small holes. “I have protected the windows with mosquito nets and tap everything. If you don’t, you will immediately have the animals everywhere in the house.”
His neighbor Claus-Peter Barth (72) is also experiencing problems with the beetles. “They are not only agile crawlers, but they can also fly. At one point the entire wall was black from the beetles.”
Kerstin (61) and Hans Neidlein (66) were shocked when they first found the beetles. “When we returned from vacation in July, there was a sea of insects in the house. They were even under my shoes.”
Strawberry beetles
The culprits are strawberry beetles. These beetles are matte black and 11 to 17 millimeters long. They are attracted to light and areas with a lot of agriculture – such as in Hirschfeld – offer ideal living conditions. They feed on strawberry seeds and a plague can ruin the harvest of a whole year, according to the Institute for Plague Sciences in Reinheim.
Strawberry beetles also occur in the Netherlands, especially on dry sandy soils, fields and wasteland. In August 2023, thousands of strawberry beetles invaded houses in the Groningen village of Beerta.