The disappearance of bees from our gardens has sparked a major disagreement over whether the culprit is a particular kind of insecticide – and concern from gardeners like John Sheard over the fate of our flowers and food IT WAS our magnificent forsythia bush which first set the alarm bells ringing this stop-start spring. It bloomed late, after surviving large scale attack from flocks of blue tits feeding on the emerging buds, then went into retreat and, at the end of March, came into one of the most magnificent displays we have ever seen.

This is what I call the “yellow season” when daffodils, crocuses, celandines and, towards the end, the less welcome dandelions come into bloom, their brilliant colouring (one hopes) signalling the end of a long, dank, windy winter. And those colours have a purpose: to attract early rising pollinators with bumble bees in the phalanx.

And that’s when the worries began. I was idly admiring my wife’s forsythia through the kitchen window, speculating on just how many blossoms had survived the avian attack: ten thousand, a hundred thousand, and perhaps even large fractions of a million? And then cam the shock: during my deep yellow reverie, just one bumble bee came to visit – and that was blown away by a strong gust of wind.

Now honey bees have been under attack for many years now by the highly infectious varroa mite and that has caused much anxiety here in North Yorkshire, where honey from the heather moors is highly prized by commercial bee keepers.

In America, where bees are transported over thousands of miles to pollinate fruit orchards and bean crops, whole colonies have disappeared into thin air for reasons still much argued over.

But so far here in the Dales – or on my allotment at least – that vital pollination duty has largely been taken over by the humble bumble. We even had one which nested in a hole under our back steps, a mere six feet of so from the forsythia and my wife’s pot-planted daffs. But this year, Mr Bumble has not made an appearance.

And there could be a reason for that, one far removed from my back yard – in fact, one which has split the entire European Union into bunches of bickering bureaucrats: neoncotinoid insecticides, which some scientists say are killing off bumble bees on a continent-wide scale.

Others say this case is not proved and – until it is – let’s keeping on pumping the stuff onto large scale crops of oilseed rape, fruit orchards, and field beans.

There is a certain irony at work here because neoncotinoids were developed to replace other, even more dangerous, organo-phosphate compounds which were a threat not just to pests: they endangered humans, particular sheep farmers, who used them in sheep dip deeps and sometimes suffered from brain damage as a result, a major cause of concern for Dales hill farmers.

So along came our new pesticide, much to the joy of the agri-chemical industry, who rubbed gleeful hands at the thought of a new profit stream, until scientists in France and Germany, began to notice a sudden decline in bumble bee numbers. That set off a whole series of research projects to see if one effect was the cause of the other.

On mainland Europe, governments acted quickly and introduced a temporary ban on neoncotinoid usage until the full findings are known. In England and Wales, the food and environment department Defra – backed by the National Farmers’ Union – took the opposite position, saying that we should keep on using the pesticides until they were proved to be a threat to the bees.

This is a similar stance taken by Defra and the NFU in the bovine tuberculosis crisis. They say that badgers give TB to cattle. But scientists commissioned by the RSPCA say it is the other way round: the cattle infect the badgers. But despite decade-long demands from conservationists for the introduction of a vaccination programme, the order went out: shoot the badgers. And to most people’s dismay, this programme has met with minimal success, despite the deaths of thousands of badgers.

But when the EU banned large-scale use of neoncotinoids – a sort of super strong derivative of the nicotine in cigarettes – the coalition caved in and extended the ban here.

Now I have a great deal of sympathy for our farmers who are facing ever-growing pressure to produce more food as soaring demand for Western-style diet in the Far East puts our own food security at risk because we grow less than half of our own needs.

But I do my bit down on the allotment – as do an estimated 300,000 allotment holders nationwide – but if I lose my bumble bees alongside the honey bees, which have virtually disappeared from my patch just when my over-wintered broad beans are coming into flower, I shall be very, very cross.

And this applies to all gardeners, for bees need to pollinate ornamental flowers and shrubs as well as fruit and veg.

So could I suggest one tiny way of our doing out bit in this budding (should I say non-budding?) crisis: if you are buying a bug spray this spring, please check the label or, better still, question the expert at the garden centre. Ands if it is neoncotinoid based, please put it back on the shelf.