Commercial forestry in the temperate forests of Fennoscandia is affecting patterns and processes of arthropod communities. For this reason, I examined short-term effects on the beetle fauna from a new phenomenon within commercial forestry, i.e., harvest of logging residue (slash) for bio-fuel in clear-cuts. Consequently, in the present study I studied abundance and species richness of two groups of forest beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae and Cerambycidae) in clear-cuts as well as in mature, uncut forests. Carabids were sampled by pitfall trapping while Cerambycids (longhorn beetles) were sampled by window trapping in seven matched sites in southeast Sweden. Each site included three treatments: a 1-yr old clear-cut with slash harvest; a 1-yr old clear-cut without slash harvest and; a mature, uncut forest surrounding the two clear-cuts. The results showed that: (i) the highest abundance of carabids was found in the uncut forest while the highest abundance of longhorns was found in clear-cuts; (ii) highest carabid species richness was found in slash removal clear-cuts, for longhorn beetles, no difference in species richness was found between the three treatments; (iii) the proportion of shared species between different treatments was highest between the clear-cut treatments for carabids, and between slash left clear-cuts and uncut forests, for longhorns; (iv) the highest total number of species and number of unique species was found in the slash removal clear-cuts for both carabids and longhorns. My results suggest that slash harvest can affect both abundance and species richness of certain forest beetles, possibly as a result of increased microhabitat disturbance.