Hey! Someone`s been eating out of my feeder!
The only, yet unanimous, complaint I received from my bee neighbors was how much the honey bees were robbing their hummingbird feeders. One resident said he actually watched the bubbles rise like an emptying office water cooler. Hummingbird watching is a very popular pastime here and everyone has a feeder. For fear of having to relocate in August, a little research yielded the following.
Among other things, honeybees like to enter a flower/feeder via a slanted entryway, and they’re attracted to yellow. So if you have one of those popular feeders, you know the ones, pitch the yellow flowers, the hummingbirds don’t care about them anyway. Then, replace them with “bee guards.” They come in a variety of types: some look like cages, and some are cylindrical plastic sleeves with a self-healing film on one end. The honeybee tongues are not strong enough to penetrate the film at the bottom, but the hummingbirds’ are. These guards run $1-$4.00. And, for the most part, work.
If you want to buy a new feeder, try the Humzinger! Guaranteed to be bee proof! Sure it is, well I hung mine right in front of my hive. Before long the honey bees found it and…it actually worked! I couldn’t believe it. Word spread quickly through the hive and they never tried again. It’s all in the flying saucer design. The holes are on top of the flat disc and the bees don’t do vertical; simple as that.
Humzinger is the original and can be more than $20.00 for a fancy one, but there are many others on the market with the same design strategy for a lot less. There is also a water well in the center to trap ants. A few ants did make it through mine somehow, but what’s a few ants in your syrup if it saves your home sweet home.