There is a stall on Skipton market which sells toddler-sized high-visibility jackets emblazoned with the slogan “Dad’s little helper.”

They are designed, I presume, to get kiddies out into the garden and away from the TV.

Well, I have hundreds, perhaps thousands, of little helpers on my allotment which is why my freezer is almost full. These don’t need any encouragement but they receive very little thanks.

They are the much misunderstood hover flies.

Before a great summer arr-ived, we had a very cold spring and come April my broad beans were in full flower only because I had brought them on in the cold frame. But it was too cold for bumblebees to be out and about in numbers and, worryingly, I have not seen a honey bee on my patch for two years or more.

But there they were, in their hundreds, hover flies working over my beans bloom by bloom, pollinating as they went. The result: when summer finally broke, a bumper crop of broad beans followed later by their French and kidney cousins.

Many hover flies look like wasps but this is deliberate camouflage to put off predatory birds. They are, in fact, quite harmless and with our honey bee population under dire threat from disease and hive desertion for causes unknown, they do an absolutely vital job.

Trouble is, as the Government urges our farmers to squeeze more and more food out of the land, several leading scientists fear that this will lead to even heavier use of pesticides, some of which are in the frame for killing off the bees – and hoverflies.

Britain is refusing to ban some of those pesticides already illegal on mainland Europe. But as Professor David Goulson, of Sussex University says, more pesticides could actually mean smaller crops because the pollinators are all dead. This subject has been the source of bitter rows since the DDT scares of the 1950s.

Isn’t it time that we began to appreciate the wonderful work of our little helpers?