A bee-keeper has spoken of her despair after an entire hive of 30,000 bees was poisoned.

Ellen Neville, from Hawkhurst, keeps a number of apiaries around the village and was present at one site off Cranbrook Road when she noticed the winged insects suddenly begin to drop on the ground.

She said: "They were shaking, very disorientated. It was a very stressful death for them."

Mrs Neville is quite certain of the cause – the bees had been poisoned by an insecticide or herbicide.

She said: "I have been keeping bees on my own for four years, and assisting others for 10 years. I've done all the qualifications and know how to recognise the cause of death.

"This was poisoning, not varroa mite or anything else. The clue is that the bees' tongues were hanging out as they died."

Mrs Neville believes that despite it being so early in the growing season, someone in the village has been using insecticide or herbicide on their flowers or crops.

She said: "I don't suppose it was a farmer – it's too early for them to be spraying. It's too early for anyone really."

Bees are like humans in that they sometimes actually enjoy foods that are bad for them.

A study by researchers at the University of Illinois found that bees prefer sugar syrup laced with the popular herbicide glyphosate or with the popular fungicide chlorothalonil over sugar syrup alone.

The forager bees, once they find a good source of food, communicate that to their workmates, who all then head there.

They would then have taken the poison with them back to the hive, where it also killed the nursery bees and the queen.

'To lose them at this stage is heartbreaking'

Mrs Neville said: "It's very distressing. Bees take a lot of care, especially over the winter period.

"You have to keep them dry, feed them and be very vigilant for any traces of varroa mite.

"Then when you get to March, you think, I've done it! You relax a little, knowing that the hive population will soon experience an explosion and they will soon start producing honey.

"Instead this has happened. To lose them at this stage is heartbreaking."

Bees can forage across an area up to three miles away, so there is no way of knowing where they picked up the poison.

Mrs Neville, who is one of the ward councillors for Hawkhurst and Sandhurst on Tunbridge Wells council, said: "The distressing thing is that not only has this killed my bees, it is certain to have killed any other pollinating insects that fed there too.

"People really need to be more thoughtful when they use these chemicals about the potential knock-on effect on the whole environment.

"Pollinating insects are critical to our food production. Kent produces 90% of the English cherries put on our shelves.

"If their blossom doesn't get pollinated, then we shall have no cherries this year."

The bee-keeper added: "I don't want to sound like I'm some New Age hippy, but bees are a good measure of the state of our environment.

"If bees are dying, what does that say?"

Mrs Neville said the bee colony was probably worth around £250, and she estimated the cost of the lost sales of honey that she might have expected them to produce this summer at around £400.

A few feet away from the dead hive, Mrs Neville has a second colony – so far unaffected.

She said: "I'm just hoping they don't now find the same poisoned food source and bring it home."