Help! I think my sempervivums are infested!

I am a novice plant lover who is cultivating a windowsill garden in my first floor flat. My brown thumb feels very green when dealing with hardy succulents, and I recently bought a lot of varieties of sempervivums from a specialist nursery. I have come home from three days away to find most of these new additions - previously healthy - covered in little brownish specks that I fear is a massive mealy bug infestation. At first I was hoping for some sort of pollen bloom as they are also quite sticky to touch, and some of the adult hens are flowering and dying. However I fear it is a disease or infestation. But because I am new to this, and my other plants have been thriving and healthy and have propagated well, I do not have the knowledge to identify or treat the problem. Please help me! I'd like to try and save these expensive plants and I'm really quite annoyed they all seem diseased now! Thank you!
See comment for images - I apologise that I had trouble uploading them with initial post!
This message was edited Jul 2, 2016 12:56 PM

This message was edited Jul 2, 2016 1:00 PM

I am trying to iploadd images with no success - here goes

I think those are aphids. The white bits would be the shed skins as the nymphs mature to the next stage. You may be able to simply blast them off with a spray bottle of water.
Are you keeping these indoors? They'd really be much happier outdoors if you can keep them there (e.g. on a balcony?) They are extremely hardy alpines, accustomed to full sun, that can also take your very wet winters if they're protected from excess wet (say under the overhang of a balcony.)



This message was edited Jul 2, 2016 11:02 PM

Thank you altagardener, I don't have a balcony but my windowsills are northwest facing and get a lot of afternoon and evening sun which is great during summer and also prevents too much heat! All my other succulents are really happy and prolific, this new lot were just settling in and now are infested! I will try the spray bottle approach but there are so so many of them! I'm thinking there must have been eggs or aphids one one of them prior to being shipped to me and now they have spread.

I started with indoor succulents a few years ago, have given up on sempervivums, due to aphids and mealy bugs. They are just too tasty. They survive outdoors in the garden, so that is where they live.
However, for other somewhat less "tasty" plants, I find a combo of two pesticides helpful (I would never use either one outdoors, as they would kill the good bugs too, but indoors any bug is killable in my opinion).
Bonide Systemic Houseplant Insect control is granules to put on the soil and water in (I don't want to inhale it). It is not instant because it has to be absorbed and put in the tissues. Then works for a long time, because it is in the plant tissue, so a bug gets a last meal.
Azamax is a spray that is a novel insecticide-it is a hormone derivative that prevents bugs and things from making new shell material, so they cannot proceed to the next stage of life. Also not instant. But this one seems nontoxic to humans and mammals so I feel OK spraying it inside. Also would never use outside because it kills indiscriminately.
Not sure if either one is available in the UK.