The bee is worth around £200 million to the UK economy.

Bees are important to the natural ecosystem as they are responsible for polinating flowering plants.

Recent changes in farming and the loss of many flower filled gardens are having a dramatic effect on bee numbers.

It is thought that almost one third of the human food chain is directly linked to the work that the bee does.

In the UK alone, bees contribute £200m a year to the economy through pollination.

The British Bee Keepers Association has over 15,000 members.

Nearly 20% of the UK’s Honey Bees died last winter.   Some research even points to the radiation given off by mobile telephone base stations being responsible for declining numbers.

To help reverse the worrying decline in the UK bee population, The Co-operative has launched Plan Bee, a 10 point plan that includes action on pesticides, actions on farms, funding research and inspiring individuals to make a difference.

Podcast

According to the article this is a very rare site and possibly the first sighting in over 200 years.

A video is also available here

The local Newspaper – The News and Star – are reporting that the bird is not known to be ringed and may be from Finland or Scandinavia.

Do you have a picture of this bird in Cumbria. Let us put the image on this website for all to see.

Links - 

Watching and waiting for the sea eagle – BBC Online

More information

Cleaning the bird feeder.

Now that Christmas day is over, we hope you had a great day,  we can get back on with cleaning the bird feeder.

Last time we had arrived at the point where the port-holes were to be removed and the debris removed from the tube.

The screws were the key to removing the feeding points but be aware of the small nut on the opposite side of the screw.  It is not captive so as you turn the crew you could loose the nut.

To remove the solid base section remove the lower feeding ports and you will notice that you can gently, using a flat blade of a screwdriver gently push the base away from the tube

This has now been done and all the parts throughly washed and scrubbed in warm water.

A note here that we initially used boiling water on the metal  bits, thinking that this would kill any bugs.  It possibly did however we noticed very quickly that the paint was starting to bubble, so we added some cold water.

This we appreciate will now have affected the paint surface, so we will monitor over the next few weeks to see how much damage has been caused.

To clean the plastic we used warm water and were careful not to scratch the plastic with heavy scrubbing.  

A long bottle brush is ideal to get all the way along the plastic tube.

Reconstruction

Is of course the inverse of the construction. We would advise starting with the bottom metal section.  This then allows you to install the other feeding ports with the tube upright.  

The ports have a locating lug and a corresponding hole in the tube.

The feeding rings just clip into the ports, but make sure you get them the correct way up.

Once all the ports, rings and the lid are re installed a quick inspection and you can refill the feeder with food.

Gallery

Further details