GARDENERS are being enlisted to help to save one of the most familiar sights of the British summer, the bumblebee. A century after Rimsky-Korsakov celebrated The Flight of the Bumblebee the small, furry creatures are in danger of extinction.

Once they were common in the countryside, where they lived in red clover fields, hedgerows and on field margins. But more intensive farming methods have now driven them into town gardens. One of the main reasons is the switch from haymaking to silage; traditional hay meadows were rich in flowers and not harvested until after flowering.

Grass for silage is mown every few weeks and has no chance to flower. Conservationists also fear the bees will die out because people are planting flowers and plants that are unkind to them.

Modern hybrids such as the French and African marigold, and many varieties of large pansies, are sterile and lack the pollen and nectar vital for the bee, which needs a constant source of food throughout the spring, summer and autumn.

Bumblebees are the biggest pollinators of most flowers and a third of edible plants such as tomatoes, gooseberries, strawberries, raspberries, potatoes and peppers. Without these insects, plants will set fewer seeds and vanish, food production decline and many wild flowers become extinct.

The National Trust, the country’s largest private landowner, and English Nature, the Government’s wildlife advisers, are therefore appealing to gardeners to dig for the bumblebee and to take care when selecting new flowers and plants.

They are anxious about the plight of native species that have declined by 60 per cent since 1970. There were once 26 species in Britain but four have already disappeared and a handful, such as Bombus ruderatus, known as the large garden bumblebee, are on the verge of extinction.

They choose flowers in white, blue, purple and yellow. Traditional cottage-garden flowers such as bluebells and foxgloves also attract bees because some have long tongues that they use to probe blooms with bells, funnels or tubes to the nectaries inside.

A leaflet on how to “get more buzz from your garden”, to be distributed at the National Trust stand at the Chelsea Flower Show next week, also suggests tht gardeners should plant lavender, delphinium, geranium and honeysuckle.

Dr David Sheppard, invertebrate ecologist at the agency, said: “If you find a nest consider it an honour. Make sure that you don’t damage or disturb it and leave it alone. Take pride in it while you have it. It will die during the autumn and will not be reused in the following year.”

Bumblebee nests are started by a single queen from the colony in the spring. They are sometimes hidden underground, but the tell-tale sign is small clumps of creamy, pale yellow wax which forms the comb. It will then be covered and protected with finely shredded grass or moss.

The old queen, the workers and the males die in late autumn and the new queens excavate underground chambers where they hibernate. These creatures are not aggressive and unlikely to sting, despite common misunderstanding.

Fiona Reynolds, the trust’s director-general, said: “Without wild bees our gardens would be sterile places, but we do not always give enough thought to how we manage our gardens to encourage these beneficial insects.” Sir Martin Doughty, the chairman of English Nature, said: “The bumblebee is right at the heart of a healthy garden. These busy insects carry pollen from plant to plant and without them we would not have as many beautiful flowers and soft fruits.”

Conservationists are also working on a project to import the short-haired bumblebee (Bombus subterraneus) — last seen in Britain in Dungeness, Kent, in 1988 — from British stock in New Zealand. Colonies were taken there in the 19th century because the clover crops were not flourishing. There is optimism, however, that some continental species might also appear in this country. Two years ago Bombus hypnorum was spotted for the first time in Hampshire.

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