Swarms of ladybirds with deadly STDs invading the UK

This was an article from 2016 and the STD is only for ladybirds and doesn't affect us. It is a species of fungus that slowly destroys the insect.
A sensational and misleading headline.

Many ladybirds we accept as native are in fact harlequins and it was the black winged ones that had come over from Africa. There are many different patterns but they are usually much larger than the native ones.

I wonder how many natives were killed as a knee jerk reaction to this article.

I did a blog on these a few years ago.
https://www.growsonyou.com/seaburngirl/blog/32925-ladybirds

Panic is the name of the game

It’s called “click bait”. The news reporters who work for web newspapers title their articles to entice you to click on it to read the article. The more clicks they get for their various articles the more assurance they have that they will get keep their job. This is a carryover from the old newsstand rag newspapers of yesteryear.

I'll have a read at your blog Eileen. Thanks.

The headlines are always causing a panic of some sort these days, too often its complete nonsense, when read its either old news or does not even relate properly to the subject, very often people do not bother to read it anyway but will spread the panic as though its going to cause the demise of us all, one of the downsides to the internet, I remember your blog Seaburn, also remember seeing a report whereby we were were asked not to destroy ladybirds as most of us cannot distinguish between the true native and a harlequin...

The Harlequins do emit some acidic smell. It must be a defence mechanism, but it is very pungent..:((

natives have black legs and feet. Harlequins have yellowy brown legs and feet.

Thanks, SBG, for that! Even though the article itself may have been old & the headline a bit misleading it was still relevant in that on Thursday we DID have a "invasion" of these Harlequin ladybirds, at least here in Huntingdon. Never have I seen so many ladybirds in one hour - literally dozens of them in the space of about an hour or so!

Perhaps I should have taken the time to read it more thoroughly & then I would have realised it was old! My apologies for perhaps alarming people! 😳

I wasn't chastising you but trying to reassure that there was no harm to you and your grand-daughter.

often old articles pop up as the newest feed. I find it rather irritating if I am honest.

Thanks SBG. I did read enough of the article to realise that the title was misleading & sensationalist & to see that the Ladybirds posed no threat to us. I wasn't worried about them but I apologised for posting the link to the thread in case anybody was frightened by the article or felt it was misleading.

I have read your interesting blog as well! Thanks for reminding us all of the differences between them that, I, for one, would never have known!

I found your blog interesting Balcony. I will read Sbg’s blog now as I really want to know which harlequin is one which is not a welcome visitor.

Thanks for reading my blog, Feverfew! I'm glad you found it of interest as well! I haven't seen any more Harlequin Ladybirds since the day I mentioned above. Nor, for that matter, any of our native Ladybirds either.

I remember some years ago being on the coast in Kent & the air was filled with swarms of ladybirds, great black clouds of them. What’s more they were biting everybody, apparently they were thirsty, so one couldn’t go near the beach. They were mentioned in the newspapers at the time. Never seen them like that before. Why the sudden large numbers.

That must have been terrible, Feverfew! They were a bit of a nuisance but no more than that!