According to a previous study, England's bees are vanishing faster than anywhere else in Europe, with more than half of hives dying out over the last 20 years. Butterflies and other insects are also in decline due to habitat loss and climate change.
The situation is so serious that the government has launched a £10 million project to find out what is causing bees and other insects to disappear.
Matt Shardlow, Chief Executive of the insect charity Buglife, said the project is essential to food security.
"Humans depend on the free services of wild pollinators including bees, moths and hoverflies," he said. "However, more than 250 pollinator species are now declining and under threat, animals that pollinated our ancestors' food are heading towards extinction and those that might pollinate our descendant's food may not survive."
Indeed Albert Einstein predicted that if the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years of life to live.
It is estimated insect pollinators contribute £440 million to the British economy through their role in fertilising crops.
The Insect Pollinator Initiative will be the most comprehensive study ever carried out in Britain into why insects are declining.
Universities and research bodies have already put forward nine projects, including plans to tag bees to find out if they are affected by pesticides.
The University of Dundee study will investigate whether certain pesticides damage the nervous systems of bees and stop them being able to do the "waggle dance" which shows the rest of the hive where a food source is located.
Professor Jane Memmot, of the Univerisity of Bristol, will look at whether bees are more suited to an urban environment than the "monoculture" of large swathes of crops in the countryside.
She said crops like strawberries need wild flowers nearby to maintain a population of bees and other insects to pollinate the fruit in summer.
"If strawberries are not pollinated by insects we end up with distorted fruit that is only good for jam," she said.
Lord Henley, the Environment Minister, said the projects would not only look at why bees are declining but offer ways to boost the population again.
"Bees, butterflies and moths play an essential role in putting food on out tables through the pollination of many vital crops. This initiative will help some of our world-class researchers to identify why bee numbers are declining, and that will help us to take the right action to help," he said.
"It is crucial we all work together on this and the biggest challenge will be to better understand the complex relationships between biological and environmental factors that affect pollinators' health and lifespan."
