One of the notable details of Monday's landmark ruling to ban the use of some neonicotinoid pesticides across the European Union was Germany's vote in favour. Germany hosts chemical giant Bayer, which makes the most widely used neonicotinoid, but switched from its previous abstention.

This move was entirely in line with the eco-friendly words of the spokesman for German agriculture minister, Ilse Aigner, on the Friday before the vote: "The accusation that Germany is blocking the protection of bees is completely absurd and baseless."

However, I have obtained documents that reveal a very different line was being taken in secret by German officials. On the same Friday, it submitted a new text, for the proposed suspension with this clause added:

Member States should be allowed to refrain from withdrawal if it is shown by evidence based on the current state of scientific knowledge and technology that the risk of exposure of bees and other pollinators to these substances is negligible.

As one source party to the negotiations told me, the effect of this loophole would have been that "any junk-science and flawed-by-design field trials fabricated by the industry and their puppets would have enabled any member state to keep using it in flowering crops."

Naturally, the German government doesn't see it this way. "The clause was proposed by Germany with the intention not to kill the suspension but to make it more flexible," a government spokesman told me. "If, for example, at some point in the future, scientists discover that say rapeseed is one of the crops where the reaction with neonics doesn't prove to be harmful to bees - then rapeseed could be taken out of the suspension without the whole directive to be revoked and another one drawn up."

There are two reasons I find this hard to swallow. The first is that the bloc of countries adamantly opposed to the ban - the UK, Hungary, Spain, Finland, Czech republic, Austria, Lithuania and Slovakia - had already tabled a rather similar loophole clause, clearly designed to kill the ban:

A Member State may maintain authorisations for [the three neonicotinoids] provided: (a) Member States ensures that no unacceptable harmful effects to bee health and no unacceptable influence on the environment are caused.

The second reason is that the German text was supported by the UK, which to its credit has always been very clear - in public and private - that is opposed the ban. In the end, all the wrecking amendments failed and a majority of nations voted for the ban.

It would not be the first time that politicians have said one thing in public and acted very differently in private. But people deserve to know that, and now you do.

Why Germany ended up voting in favour of a ban it had apparently tried to kill is a mystery. But one source suggests upcoming elections in Germany meant that - with officials facing defeat anyway - they took the option popular with the public and backed the ban.

The neonicotinoid story remains a very live one and has a long way to run. Just two days after the ban, a new study showed the devastating effects Bayer's neonicotinoid is having on dragonflies, snails and other invertebrates across the Netherlands. Some ditches were so polluted with the insecticide, the water could have been bottled and used as an effective bug-killer.

On Thursday, a US department of agriculture report on bee health, having noted the importance of disease and lack of food, said: "Acute and sublethal effects of pesticides on honey bees have been increasingly documented, and are a primary concern." The US Environmental Protection Agency is currently being sued for failing to protect pollinators.

I'll end this busy week with a pair of predictions about the two-year ban across Europe on the use of neonicotinoids, which essentially starts in 2014: by 2016, I'd expect there to be little effect on crop yields, because the pesticide is largely used as a prophylactic and also for there to be little effect on bee health, because neonics persist in the environment and many of their uses - e.g. flea killer for pets - will continue.

Bee health and crop yields are both important issues and both need much more study. The fact that these chemicals have been in use for over a decade and yet we still lack almost all the answers is perhaps the most shocking aspect of all. That, perhaps surprisingly, is something upon which I know that both myself and environment secretary Owen Paterson agree.