What not to put in hummingbird nectar

Honey — the one that matters most

If you take one thing from this page: do not put honey in a hummingbird feeder. Audubon is direct about it — honey can promote dangerous fungal growth.

The reasoning is that honey is not just sugar. It carries yeasts and fungal spores, and diluted in warm water in an outdoor feeder it becomes a growth medium in a way that a refined sucrose solution does not. The bird then drinks it and carries it in a mouth and tongue that are constantly wet.

Honey feels like the natural, kind choice, which is exactly why it keeps getting used. It is the single most harmful thing on this list.

Red food coloring

Audubon calls red food coloring not necessary and notes that it could also prove harmful. That is the published position and it is enough to settle the question.

The practical point is that it does not even work as intended. Hummingbirds are drawn to red on the feeder, which is why almost every feeder on the market has a red lid or red ports. The nectar itself is invisible from a distance. Dye adds a possible risk in exchange for no benefit — a straightforwardly bad trade. More on the red dye question.

Brown sugar, raw sugar, turbinado, unrefined

The recipe specifies refined white sugar. Less-refined sugars retain molasses and other components that refined white sucrose does not, and the standard guidance across the category is to avoid them. This is not a case where “less processed” is gentler — the whole point of refined white sugar here is that it is nearly pure sucrose, which is what flower nectar is made of.

Artificial sweeteners

A hummingbird visits a feeder for calories. A zero-calorie sweetener provides the taste of food and none of the fuel, to an animal with one of the highest metabolic rates of any vertebrate. There is no version of this that is a good idea.

Everything else people add

• Vitamins, supplements or “nectar boosters.” Hummingbirds get protein and micronutrients from insects and spiders, not from nectar. Your feeder is a fuel stop, not a complete diet, and it does not need to be one.
• Fruit juice. Ferments faster than sugar water and brings its own yeasts.
• Molasses, agave, maple syrup, corn syrup. All non-sucrose or mixed-sugar products outside the tested recipe. Refined white sugar is the answer.
• Anything to deter insects. Never put anything in nectar to repel bees or ants. That is a feeder-design problem and a moat problem, solved outside the liquid.

And two things not to put on the feeder either

Insecticide. Audubon is explicit that pesticides can injure, kill and reduce population numbers of birds, bees and other animals. Nothing sprayed goes near a feeder.

Oil or petroleum jelly around the ports. A widely repeated bee tip and a genuinely bad one: oils and petroleum products can damage feathers if a hummingbird contacts them, and a hummingbird will contact anything smeared around the hole it feeds from.

What to do instead

Four parts water, one part plain white sugar, boiled to dissolve, cooled, and changed every three to five days — daily in very hot weather. That is the entire discipline, and the recipe page has it in full: hummingbird nectar recipe.

The part that is genuinely hard is the change cycle, not the ingredients. That is what the cleaning page is for, and it is why we score feeders on how fast they come apart.