I HAVE spent much of my life working close to nature and caring for plants is very much like nurturing a child.

We are very lucky we have such a range of flowers, so many colours and shapes but their existence goes back millions of years and part of their success has been based on bees spreading the pollen to bring about variation in a safe way.

We are lucky in Whitchurch to have two sources of local honey.

Hives owned by two men and another owned by a lady.

It is some of the best tasting honey in the world.

Of course I do not want to lose my treats of honey bought from our Friday market, but on a deeper level, I do not want the insecticide sprays being used to grow crops that nature would deem artificial to lead not only to the death of bees but to undermine basic forces in nature.

Quite rightly bans have been in place for sometime but talk is afoot to allow toxic spraying to take place so that the bees and us will take it in with obvious ongoing damage to honey production and pollination of fruit trees and bushes.

Graham Burgess, Diploma Horticulture Kew, The Weir, Whitchurch