Throughout Oxfordshire there are farmers and food producers working against all odds from dawn to dusk to ensure we can put quality local food on our plates. Beekeeper Jim Chambers is among them.

His love and respect for the honeybee began when he was just five years old and his father made him his first beehive.

Jim admits that from then on beekeeping took over his life. He calls it bee fever and describes it as a form of insanity from which you never recover.

"My father was a carpenter, so he made that first hive from odd bits of wood in his workshop, then he went out and found me a small swarm to go in it.

"From that moment on bees dominated my life. They are such fascinating insects I find I can't think of anything else," said Jim, who gets up at the crack of dawn to tend his bees, and never takes a holiday unless it's to attend a beekeeping convention.

I was lucky enough to meet Jim and some of his bees in his apiary near Ipsden. He has others housed in fields all over South Oxfordshire and some are currently hired out to Waitrose who use them to pollinate their soft fruits.

Jim explained that his respect for these insects is partly due to the way they organise their hives and work together.

"Honeybees fly more than 800km during their working lives to produce just half a teaspoon of honey. It takes the nectar from two million flowers to produce one pound of honey. We should never take honey for granted," he added.

Impressive stuff. What other food takes so much energy and effort to produce?

Actually honey is the only product that we eat that's produced by insects and it's probably the only product that really doesn't need a sell-by date on the label. Although honey producers do provide a sell-by date - most suggesting a life of 18 months, it's not necessary. Jim accepts that today's legislation requires him to print a sell-by date on his jars, but laughs that such a law exists for honey, as it can live on for years and years providing the cap remains firmly in place. He hates the thought that mature quality honey is discarded even though it's as good as the honey he's harvesting this year.

Apparently an explorer discovered a jar of honey in an Egyptian tomb which was more than 2,000 years old, yet it still tasted delicious! So, if you discover an unopened jar of honey at the back of the larder which is way past its sell-by date, don't worry, it's still fit for use as it contains no chemicals or anything that will spoil it.

Because honey is a mixture of natural sugars (fructose and glucose) water and small amounts of minerals, vitamins and pollen, it's one of those rare products that contains absolutely no additives.

The only health scare connected with honey happened in 2002 when the Food Standards Agency called for the withdrawal of all jars of Chinese honey and blends that contained honey from China, when tests revealed traces of an antibiotic called chloramphenicol in samples. Although the risk to human health was extremely small, all Chinese honey was recalled, followed by an EU ban on all honey from China.

As only ten per cent of the UK's 30,000 tonne requirement is produced in this country and China supplied more than 50 per cent of our imported honey at the time, this created a chronic shortage.

Now beekeepers worry about the poorly understood phenomenon of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) which was first noted in the US and is now threatening British bees.

CCD is generally characterised by a complete absence of adult bees in colonies, yet there is little or no build-up of dead bees in or around the colonies. They just vanish, leaving both honey and bee pollen untouched. Last year more than 11 per cent of all beehives inspected were wiped out and no one knows why, though experts are suggesting it could be a combination of causes, rather than just one.

The problem is becoming so critical that the British Beekeepers Association say that if left unchecked honeybees could disappear completely from Britain in the next ten years, causing calamitous economic and environmental problems. Extra government funding is needed to investigate the problem but as yet it has not been forthcoming.

After spending some considerable time at Jim's apiary, we met up with Stuart Bailey, spokesperson for the Honey Association who conducted a honey tasting in the nearby pub, The King William.

Stuart explained that thanks to the arrival of runny honey, which is packed in a convenient squeezy jar, more than 40 per cent of all honey sold by the Wallingford-based company Rowse is now used for cooking. He puts this phenomenon down to the influence of the celebrity chefs and the convenience of this product, which is created from pure multi-floral honey from Britain, Mexico and Australia.

Our tasting session began with Acacia honey produced from bees with access to the blossom of the large Acacia trees in Hungary, Romania and other Eastern European countries. This light, clear honey stays liquid longer than most honeys and is idea for sweetening drinks.

Next came the English honey, a white creamy set honey, with a creamy barley sugar taste, which gets its flavour from fruit blossoms, the hedgerows and rape seed flowers. Greek pine honey came next. This is produced by bees feeding on the sugary sap secreted from Greek pine trees and is a clear golden amber honey with a quite remarkable spicy, woody taste. Then came Manuka clear, sourced from New Zealand where the Manuka bushes grow. While slightly cloudy, this golden coloured honey with its distinctive rich taste is now celebrated for its strong antibacterial properties.

Jim then placed two of his own jars on the table and insisted we taste them too. They were so luscious we concluded that his condition was infectious and that we'd all caught bee fever too.