Wasps Out of Hummingbird and Oriole Feeders
I have a Showcase Minnesota appearance this morning and I'm talking about how to minimize wasps around your hummingbird and oriole feeders. They won't 100% keep wasps out of your yard or feeding area, but these tips can help reduce your wasp numbers. All of the wasp catchers that I have with me this morning are from Cardinal Corner.I asked owners, Pam and Le which were their favorite hummingbird feeders they both chose different ones. Pam chose:
A feeder called the Best-1 Hummingbird Feeder--good name, huh! It's for sure in my top five, easy to fill and won't drip. It's fairly easy to clean but one that I think is even easier is:
Le's favorite the Mini Hummzinger. The whole top comes right off to allow easy cleaning of the whole feeder. It also has a built in ant moat to try and keep ants from getting to the rest of the nectar...although in the spring sometimes I fill it with mealworms or grape jelly for orioles.Another reason I like both of these feeders is that neither of them have any yellow on them, and wasps appear to be more attracted to the color yellow. So, avoid having yellow on your nectar feeder if you can--even if the yellow is supposed to be a wasp guard (sometimes called a bee guard).
One thing you can do is to rub a small amount of vegetable oil or Vaseline around the openings of the nectar feeders making the area slippery and unattractive to the wasps. I had someone criticize me once for this advice that hummingbirds could get the oil on their feathers and die from exposure, but really the only way a hummer could get that one their feathers would be if you grabbed the hummingbird and rubbed it against the oiled openings.
Pam and Le also recommended putting this around the edge of jelly dishes to keep wasps from taking over grape jelly. Of course we all agreed that the best solution for wasps in grape jelly feeders is to just switch to feeding life mealworms.
In conjunction with the Vaseline and oil use a wasp catcher. It's a container that wasps can fly into but are unable to fly out of. Because they are attracted more by smell than hummingbirds, you fill this with a small amount of a heavier sugar solution than you would your hummingbird nectar. You can use equal parts water to equal parts sugar, Mountain Dew, Diet Pepsi, syrup, apple cider, etc all of these are heavier than sugar than the four parts water to one part sugar of hummingbird and oriole nectar.
Wasp catchers come in a variety of colors, yellow being popular because that is a color that attracts them, but it certainly isn't necessary. They can be plastic or glass (like the ones in the above photo). Hang these in the same general area as your nectar feeders.Anyone else have any tips for keeping wasps away from hummingbird and oriole feeders?
posted by birdchick at 7:01 AM
15 Comments:
I did get an interesting question this morning on Showcase Minnesota:
"Can I use Splenda for hummingbird nectar?"
NO! Unlike us diet conscious females, hummingbirds actually need these calories for migration.
I don't think any study has proven that artificial/no calorie sweetners has killed a hummingbird, but it's not anything they would ever encounter in the wild and so should not be used. Same goes for honey.
Four parts water to one part sugar is the closest approximation to nectar found in flowers and is the safest and besting thing to use for nectar.
Sharon -- I agree that the Humm-Zingers are the best feeders out there for no-ants/no-wasps. I've had some negative feedback by suggesting the cooking oil around the feeder ports, so this is what I tell my yellow-jacket wary customers: "With the Humm-Zinger, you don't need to worry about wasps & yellow-jackets, because while hummingbirds' tongues are long enough to drink out of this feeder, the smaller tongues of yellow-jackets aren't long enough to get to the nectar. Since this is a no-drip feeder, wasps & yellow-jackets will basically ignore this feeder."
This has been my #1 selling hummingbird feeder this year, and it's also the #1 loved feeder by my own hummingbirds at my feeder station at home!
I find that putting the wasp-traps at least 6 feet (mine's more like 12 feet on my deck at home) away from your feeder station helps to draw the suckers AWAY from your hummingbird feeders.
I love the Humm-Zinger too, mostly because it's so easy to clean and cheap enough to have a few at opposite ends of the yard.
I have 4 hummingbird feeders up this year: a Humm-Zinger - no wasps ever at that one - and a Perky Pet (that old stand-by, with the yellow "bee guards") that doesn't seem to atttract wasps either. Both of these are popular with the hummers and my favorites for ease of use and maintenance.
I also have some unknown brand gizmo that you use with a plastic soda bottle that I am only using this year because I have so many hummingbirds (14+) and which is first on my list to replace. It is functional, but not great and REALLY UGLY.
A new feeder for me this year is homemade one, consisting of a glass bottle with a wooden top for connecting the hanger and a plastic and wooden base. There is a metal ring with 3 red "flowers" as feeding ports and no yellow anywhere. This is the one that has the most wasps on it. I am trying Vaseline on the flowers. This feeder had almost no red on it, except for a painting on the glass bottle, and initially was not used. I painted the wood parts red, which has helped attract hummingbirds, but the wasps are now detering the hummers, so it is still less used.
Question about the wasp-catchers: Once you trap the wasps, what do you do with them?
Kathi
I read someplace last year to put Skin-So-Soft around the ports to keep bees away, so I just tried it this morning, and so far it works. It did not deter the hummingbirds, and I put the stuff on the outside of the "flower" so it's about a 1/4 inch away from the actual opening, which seems safe to me.
KatDoc
One of my customers used to put the wasp trap in her freezer for about an hour to make sure the wasps were dead before she would clean it out.
anonymous
I for got about the Skin So Soft idea. I know a lot of people who have had good success with that. Also, that's a good idea to keep it a quarter inch away from the opening just to be on the safe side of hummers not touching it.
These comments have some great tips! I'm so glad I enabled comments!
I am using that Best-1 Hummingbird Feeder. It works great. One of the things I really like about it is that I can see the hummingbird juice so clearly through my kitchen window and so the second it starts getting cloudy, I can bring it in, clean it, refill it and voila! I try to do that at night so my hummers aren't disappointed. I live in northern California and we have Anna's Hummingbirds all winter so my feeder gets a lot of use! I like it. No bees or wasps around it and the ants can't figure out how to get to it. So, it's all good.
My low-tech solution is to place dishes of sugar water about 6 feet from each hummer feeder to lure the bees away. I guess I'll check into those Humm-Zinger feeders.
I bought one of the hummzingers this year and I have not seen one hummer use it. All the rest get plenty of use. I also bought one for my sister and the only thing using it are her Baltimore orioles.
Hummingbirds are creatures of habit, if they are used to a different style of feeder in your yard like a dripper style as opposed to a saucer style like a hummzinger, they will tend to go to what they are used to first before trying the new feeder--especially of the older styles are always full of fresh nectar.
I have been trying EVERYTHING to keep the bees away with no luck. After spending alot of time at your website and others, I made my own bee ports that work like a charm. A couple dozen bees were so frustrated after about 5-7 minutes they all disappeared and have not come back. I cut about 1/2 inch piece off an ordinary drinking straw, cut it lengthwise and rolled it really tight, then slipped it into the flower port of the feeder. A 1/4 inch sticks up above the flower port and the bees cannot reach any nectar, but the hummers have no problem.
Cindy from Cincinnati
We like to feed both hummingbirds and Baltimore orioles but they require different strengths of sugar/water solution--4:1 for hummers and 6:1 for orioles. Could we use a 5:1 solution and use it in both feeders?
Nancy in Iowa
Orioles do not need a different solution. 4:1 is sufficient for both species.
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HI, I live in SC and the wasp are bad at one of my feeders but it has yellow flowers! I will replaces ASAP. The SAFE CURE FOR ANTS IS TO RUB OLIVE OIL ON THE HANGER! It does not gum up like vegatable oil.The ants will not cross the olive oil. try putting some in the trail of ants and they will make a u turn.
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