Bee, Ant, Insect Problems at Hummingbird Feeders
Bee & Ant Problems at Hummingbird Feeders
Ants and Crawling Bug Problems
If your hummingbird feeder is being visited by ants and bees and chasing away hummers, you will require some type of ant traps or ant guard. Typically these are small dishes or cups of water to can suspend above the feeder which work as a barrier, creating a moat of water between the wire or hook the feeder is hung by, and the feeder itself. This acts to cut off the ant’s access to the feeder. Ants will make a steady line up to a feeder without an ant trap because feeding port holes are easily accessible to them. Many hummingbird nectar feeders now come with built in ant guards but if your current feeder does not have one, these moat guards they are available as an add-on accessory for existing feeders. It’s a very simple, inexpensive solution to crawling bug trouble. You can shop for a variety of different styles of ant and crawling bug moats here: Hummingbird Feeder Ant Guards
They come in decorative styles such as:
Decorative Ant Water Guard
or the more purely functional styles such as:
Hummingbird Feeder Ant Moat Clear
These water filled moats are very effective in stopping crawling bugs from making a path straight to a feeder. One thing that we do find at our own hummingbird stations is that smaller songbirds - particularly chickadees, titmice and finches - love to hang on the wire and drink from the moats. We’ve found the larger ant cups such as pictured above, as opposed to the smaller built in and cups that come with many styles of feeders, to be an advantage. The smaller songbirds will often drink all of the water from the small cups between nectar changes therefore we sometimes use the extra larger moats. We have plenty of bird baths and water around, but our little birds seem to prefer prefer a drink from something their own size. The photo to the left was taken from our back deck.
Wasps, Bees and Flying Insects
We have found in our own gardens that bees prefer yellow. Now maybe there is some scientific backup to this, we do not know. Maybe it’s complete hooey on our part and only occurring in our backyards. The bees in our backyard annoy our yellow hummingbird nectar feeders quite a bit more than our feeders which are red. They are also more probable to be a bother at a gravity style feeder over a saucer or dish style because the nectar is right up to the feeding port and can be easily accessed by a bee. however, there are all sorts of bee guards for this which can be added to feeders. Bee guards form small cages over the actual feeding port itself which the bee can not climb or reach past. Often these bee guards are yellow, but if the bee lands and only finds yellow plastic within it’s reach, there is nothing of interest so it simply flies away.
This is a classic gravity style, or inverted bottle hummingbird feeder which has bee and wasp guards attached:
Inverted Bottle Hummingbird Feeder
If you already own a hummingbird feeder which does not have the attached bee wasp guards, they can be purchased separately:
Hummingbird Feeder Wasp Bee Guards
For us, our favorite hummingbird feeder is the dish, or saucer style. These feature the nectar reservoir below the feeding ports, therefore the nectar isn’t accessible to bees or wasps. The insects simply can not reach far enough into the dish to get to the nectar. Also, the nectar isn’t touching any seams where bees can feed from. This also makes them dripless. Ant guards are frequently built into a dish or saucer style hummingbird feeder.
Aspects HummZinger Fancy
It’s tough to see from the above photo, but there is a small cup at the base of the hanger post which you can fill with water to stop ants from crawling to the nectar. The nectar level is too far down the reservoir for bees to reach. You can shop for a large assortment of saucer, gravity and gorgeous decorative hummingbird feeders at Hummingbird Feeder Store or for foods at Pre-Made Hummingbird Food and Nectar Concentrate.