Add-on bee guards for a feeder you already own

The bad news first

Most people arrive at this question the same way. The feeder is fine. You like it. You have cleaned it, you have hung it properly, and now there are bees at the ports and you would like to spend ten dollars rather than thirty and be done.

The honest answer is that this only works if you own the right feeder. Bee guards are not a standard part like a lightbulb. They are molded to fit a specific port on a specific cover, and the two manufacturers who make good ones are explicit that their guards fit their own feeders and no others.

That is not a marketing restriction. A guard that does not seat tightly is worse than no guard at all, because it leaves a gap at exactly the place you were trying to seal and gives bees a ledge to stand on.

How we judged these

1. Is the compatibility published? A named list of models, by the maker. Anything vaguer is not a specification.
2. What is the mechanism? A physical barrier, or a claim about color or scent. Only the first kind is a product.
3. Can it be cleaned? Anything that sits in a feeding port is in the weekly wash, and it has to survive that.
4. Does it survive the season? Flexible parts perish. Packs that include spares are worth more than they look.

The two mechanisms, and why they are not equivalent

A membrane over the port is the Aspects approach. Each Nectar Guard Tip slides onto a feeding port on the underside of the cover, and the flexible membrane in the center opens when a hummingbird inserts its beak and closes tight when the beak is withdrawn. For the great majority of the day the nectar is behind a closed barrier that a flying insect cannot get through.

A raised barrier around the port is the Perky-Pet approach. The guard snaps over the port and puts a physical lip between an insect and the nectar. A hummingbird’s beak and tongue reach past it; a bee’s tongue is much shorter, so if the nectar level sits below the barrier the bee cannot reach.

The difference matters when the feeder is full. A barrier depends on distance, so it is least effective at exactly the moment you have just refilled and the nectar is at its highest. A membrane does not care about the level. That is the main reason the Aspects tips rank above the Perky-Pet guards here, despite costing several times as much.

Find your model number first

Before you buy either product, go and look at the feeder. Perky-Pet molds the model number into the plastic of the base or prints it on the underside — a code like 203CPBN or 210PB. Aspects uses item numbers in the 400s, such as 429 for the HummZinger HighView and 433 for the HummBlossom.

Then check it against the published list:

• Aspects Nectar Guard Tips fit the HummZinger HighView, HummZinger Ultra, HummZinger Fancy, Little Fancy and HummBlossom.
• Perky-Pet 205Y bee guards fit models 203CPBN, 203CPBR, 204CP-4 and 403CP. Perky-Pet states on its own site that if the guards are not fitting, the feeder is most likely not one of those models.

That last sentence is unusually straight for a manufacturer, and it saves a lot of people a return.

It also has a buying consequence worth knowing before you choose a feeder: Perky-Pet’s 8 oz Pinch-Waist (203CPBN) is on that list and its 16 oz sibling (210PB) is not, so only one of the two sizes can ever take replacement guards — our Pinch-Waist review works through it.

The yellow problem

One caveat on the Perky-Pet guards that is worth knowing before you order: they are yellow.

The National Audubon Society advises avoiding feeders with yellow decor, because bees are attracted to the color. So the cheapest retrofit bee guard on the market is the color most likely to draw the insect it is defending against. The guard still works by geometry — the barrier is a barrier regardless of its color — but you are solving a problem and advertising it at the same time. Where a feeder lets you swap yellow flower inserts for red ones, that is worth doing, and the same logic is worked through in how to keep bees off hummingbird feeders.

If neither list includes your feeder

Which will be most readers. Three real options, in the order we would try them.

1. Stop the drips, which is where the bees actually are

This costs nothing and it is the most commonly skipped step. Bees are far more interested in sugar water on the outside of a feeder than in nectar behind a port. Audubon puts it plainly: if the feeder is covered in sugar water, barring bees from the drinking hole will not do much good.

So before buying a guard, work out why your feeder is leaking. Inverted bottle feeders push nectar out through the ports as trapped air warms through the day — that is geometry, not a fault. Wipe the outside down at every nectar change, and move the feeder out of full afternoon sun, and a surprising number of bee problems simply end.

2. Change where it hangs

Moving a feeder even a short distance often breaks the pattern, because foraging insects return to a remembered location. Shade also reduces the pressure, since a hot feeder pushes more nectar out of its ports. Where to hang a feeder covers the trade-offs.

3. Buy the feeder that has them built in

On a window feeder specifically, the Roamwild builds bee exclusion into the port geometry and adds two ant moats, which covers both insect problems without a single accessory.

If bees are a persistent, every-season problem, a feeder designed against them beats a part bolted onto one that was not. A saucer feeder holds nectar below the ports, so there is nothing for warming air to push out and nothing dripping down the outside; and the HummZinger Ultra adds molded bee guards on top of that geometry. The full set of options is in the best bee-proof hummingbird feeders.

The picks

Aspects 384 Nectar Guard Tips — the one that actually excludes

Four packs of twelve tips, sized for quarter-inch ports, each about 6 cm long. They push onto the ports from the underside of the cover, and the center membrane opens for a beak and closes after it.

They work, and the reason they are worth the money over the barrier type is that they do not depend on the nectar level. The honest costs: they fit Aspects feeders only; they add twelve small flexible parts to your weekly wash, and a membrane that closes tightly has a crease that holds sugar; the membranes perish and need replacing; and a four-pack costs more than a whole budget feeder. The 48 tips do mean your replacements are already in the box.

Perky-Pet 205Y Replacement Bee Guards — if you own one of the four

A four-pack of snap-on guards that put a raised barrier around the port, for roughly the price of a coffee. The best thing about them is that each one snaps open for cleaning rather than having to be pried off, which is how most add-on guards eventually crack.

They are also the right answer if the guards your feeder came with have gone brittle — that is what they are sold as. Against them: four models only, yellow, and a barrier rather than a membrane.

Aspects HummZinger Ultra — the answer for everyone else

Not a retrofit, and that is the point. If your feeder is not on either compatibility list, the honest recommendation is to stop trying to modify it. The Ultra is a two-part saucer with bee guards designed into the cover and the ant moat molded into the lid — both insect defenses handled by the design rather than by accessories, on a feeder that comes apart in one movement for cleaning.

It costs several times what a bag of guards costs. It also solves the problem permanently rather than for a season, and it is reviewed in full in our HummZinger Ultra review. If you want to know whether the bee guards are worth the step up from the HighView specifically, that is the whole subject of HighView vs Ultra.

One thing bee guards will not do

They will not stop ants. It is the most common confusion in this whole subject and it is worth being blunt about: ants walk down the hanging wire and are stopped by a moat of water above the feeder; bees fly to the ports and are stopped by port geometry. Neither solution touches the other problem, and buying the wrong one is the usual reason people conclude that “nothing works.” The two are separated properly in bee guards vs ant moats.