IT seemed a strange clash – gardeners and conservation types at odds with beekeepers.

Especially since their difference of opinion is a matter of life and death.

But that was the scene down at Darwen’s Sunnyhurst Woods where an argument has arisen about plans to remove Himalayan Balsam – a prolific plant you are certain to have seen even if you wouldn’t be able to identify it by name.

Take a look around any large country park in East Lancashire or other pieces of land like railway embankments from spring onwards and you will find large chunks of it.

It grows fast and is often 6ft tall by late summer with purple-coloured flowers and so dense that anything previously underneath soon dies through lack of light.

Like so many of our most invasive, problem plants (Japanese Knotweed – which can grown through concrete – and Giant Hogweed are two others) it was brought here from its native territory by those admirably indomitable Victorian explorers who travelled the world collecting animals and plants to bring home.

Unfortunately while one on its own in a garden might look ok these things spread like wildfire with each plant producing about 2,500 seeds which are shot up to 15 feet away in exploding seed cases.

The bees love them too because they produce an atttractively sugary nectar, and more of it than any of our own native plants so they make a beeline (sorry) for it ignoring our own much less tasty flowers.

Now the beekeepers say that because this year’s shockingly wet summer left native plants in a pathetic state for producing pollen our own bees would have been all but wiped out if it hadn’t been for the almost indestructible Balsam.

And that leaves us with quite a dilemma.

No one wants to see the humble bumble bee disappear but surely we don’t have to allow these monstrous weeds to literally take over our countryside unchecked.

It’s all down to man interfering with nature. Moving alien plants and animals around the world has brought us shedloads of problems. There’s the grey squirrels taking over from the red squirrels, the thuggish American Signal crayfish, which has now all but wiped out or own gentler variety in rivers, and of course the macho, all-year-round Spanish bluebells which began in gardens but are now dominating woodlands at the expense of our own more delicate English variety.

And why?

People all over the world admire the traditional English cottage garden but many of us are busy trying to nurture in our flower beds the kind of exotic plants and trees which belong in North Africa, Australia or truly tropical countries like Borneo.

In short it’s a mess.

But we’ve got to draw the line somewhere.

It’s true that bees have suffered badly because of our increasingly wet summers allegedly the result of climate change caused by our destruction of the ozone layer.

But we sorely need them to continue pollinating our own native plants rather than being tempted by the tastiness of something which is equipped to survive on the steep slopes of Nepal but runs rampant in East Lancashire and smothers everything growing beneath it.