Honeysuckle buds being eaten

Hi all,. I have two well established "common" honeysuckle plants which were in the garden when I moved here. For the first 2-3 years they were fantastic which loads of beautifully scented flowers. Then we had the "heatwave" year and they got mildew as I didn't water enough. I cut them both back and both put on lots of lovely new growth...then it all went wrong when buds started to show. Something was eating them as they were growing and resulted in practically no flowers. No leaf damage and nothing obvious to see at the time the damage was done. I wrote it off as a bad year for them but it's happened again this year and it's so frustrating. I have 5  other different varieties of lonicera and none of these have been affected. Anyone have any idea what's going on? Aphids seem to come up on every online search but I'm not convinced as only the flowers are affected, not the leaves. There has been some evidence of aphids on youngest leaves but only some time after the flowers were decimated and not much anyway. I have tried spraying various aphids with water but find the force needed to remove them can cause damage itself. I squish the ones on my roses and others are left for the ladybirds (who over-wintered in my outhouse then disappeared without earning their lodgings!) I have a few ladybird larvae about now, but the damage has long-since been done to the honeysuckle. Sorry this is long, just wanted to give all info that may be of use! Thanks in advance