How to keep bees off hummingbird feeders

Why bees are at your feeder

Almost always because it is leaking, and almost never because the ports are too big.

A honeybee’s tongue is short. A hummingbird’s is long. A properly designed port already puts the nectar out of a bee’s reach — which is why saucer feeders are inherently bee-resistant without any special part. What bees can reach is spilled nectar: on the base, down the outside of the reservoir, on the ground beneath.

And an inverted-bottle feeder spills constantly. The air trapped above the nectar expands as it warms and pushes liquid out through the ports. That is not a fault — it is what bottle feeders do. See why hummingbird feeders leak.

Which is why the fixes below are in the order they are in.

The seven fixes, most effective first

1. Switch to a saucer feeder

The single highest-leverage change. It cannot drip, and the nectar sits below the ports out of a bee’s reach. This one move solves most bee problems outright. Saucer feeders.

2. Wash the outside of the feeder, every refill

Not just the inside. Sticky residue on the base and body is the buffet. It takes ten seconds with a cloth and it is the free version of fix one.

3. Move the feeder three or four feet

Genuinely effective and costs nothing. Insects lose track of a relocated feeder while hummingbirds re-find it quickly. If a swarm has established, this often breaks it.

4. Fit bee guards

Nectar-Guard tips are flexible collars that a hummingbird’s bill parts and that close behind it, leaving nothing open for an insect to land on. Fitted as standard on the HummZinger Ultra, and available separately for several other Aspects feeders — worth checking before buying a whole new feeder. Bee-proof feeders.

5. Avoid yellow

Audubon specifically advises avoiding feeders with yellow decor, because bees are attracted to the color. If your feeder has yellow flower inserts and red ones are available, swap them.

6. Move it into shade

Two benefits. Less thermal expansion in a bottle feeder means less dripping. And cooler nectar spoils more slowly, which helps with the cleaning schedule as well.

7. Offer a decoy

A shallow dish of sugar water some distance from the main feeding area can draw bees away. It is a real technique and it comes with an obvious caveat: you are deliberately maintaining a second sticky thing, so put it well away and expect to clean it too.

Two things never to do

Insecticide. Audubon is explicit: pesticides can injure, kill and reduce population numbers of birds, bees and other animals. Nothing sprayed goes near a feeder, at any concentration, for any reason.

Oil or petroleum jelly around the ports. Widely repeated, genuinely harmful. Oils and petroleum products can damage feathers if a hummingbird comes into contact with them — and it will, because you have smeared it around the hole it feeds from. A hummingbird with fouled feathers cannot thermoregulate or fly properly.

Bees are not wasps

Worth separating, because the behavior differs and so do the fixes. Honeybees are persistent but passive and they are feeding. Wasps are more aggressive, will drive hummingbirds off a feeder outright, and are more likely to be attracted to a feeder as territory rather than only as a food source. Some of the fixes overlap and some do not — that has its own page.

And ants are a completely different problem with a completely different solution: water, above the feeder. A moat does nothing for a bee. Keeping ants out.

A word for the bees

Honeybees at a feeder are not a pest problem in the moral sense — they are pollinators having a bad summer, usually because nectar-bearing flowers are scarce. Everything recommended above either denies access or moves the feeder. None of it kills anything, and that is deliberate.