Brown Marmorated Stink Bug

 Brown Marmorated Stink Bug Halyomorpha halys (Fr. Punaise diabolique) is a shield bug that has arrived in Europe from its native Korea, Japan, Taiwan and China. It's an increasingly serious pest of fruit crops. I suspect it is the reason my rhubarb is often insect damaged. Like all bugs they feed by jabbing their hypodermic like proboscis into their food and sucking. As you can imagine this ruins commercial fruit and offers a potential vector for plant disease.

A Brown Marmorated Stink Bug which blundered into Simon at the doctor's surgery a few days ago.

The bugs are larger than the various native shield bugs, and come in a mottled brown pattern. It can be distinguished from lookalike native species by the two bands of white on each antennae and the pale triangles around the abdomen. Similar looking bugs with three bands of white or yellow bands on their antennae or pale squares around the abdomen are native species and nothing to worry about.

They come to the attention of most people when they attempt to overwinter inside houses. Now that they are in France they've dispersed quite quickly. The adults can fly, and all stages of their life cycle are often unwittingly transported by humans when merchandise is distributed.

A Brown Marmorated Stink Bug found in our house in January.

The French National Agronomy Institute (INRAE) was on the case within a couple of years of their arrival and has identified several species of tiny parasitic wasps which will attack these bugs. The INRAE is working with two Asian species of wasp which parasitise the stink bugs' eggs and act as a biological control.

Members of the public who encounter a Brown Marmorated Stink Bug are encouraged to report it on the INRAE database https://ephytia.inrae.fr/fr/C/20539/Agiir-Signaler-une-punaise-diabolique

A Brown Marmorated Stink Bug found in our house in January.

The first sighting in France was in 2012, but initially observers did not realise what they were looking at and misidentified them as a harmless native lookalike, the Mottled Stink Bug Rhaphigaster nebulosa. They finally arrived in Indre et Loire in 2020 and are now established in the majority of French départements (counties).