As part of long-term research on the canopy of subtropical rain forest in southeast Queens- land, we have compared three common techniques of insect collecting-sweeping, beating and insecticidal spraying. Segments of understory vegetation were sampled using either sweepnets or beating trays in a standard fashion and then, the same sites were misted using pyrethrum. Samples based on sweep netting collected only 10% of the numbers collected by misting, and beating approximately 25%. The proportions of insect orders collected by each method also different significantly, illustrative of the fact that these methods are effective only for certain groups of insects. Misting and beating generated similar proportions of the major taxa whereas sweeping underestimated Collembola and overestimated Diptera. For non-insect arthropods, both beating and sweeping overestimated the proportions of Araneida and substantially underestimated the Amphipoda. The use of sweeping and beating, therefore, provided very substantial underestimates of the fauna.