Wasps on a hummingbird feeder

Why wasps are a different problem

Honeybees at a feeder are persistent and passive. They are foraging, they mostly ignore the birds, and hummingbirds mostly tolerate them.

Wasps — yellowjackets in particular — are territorial and aggressive. They will actively drive hummingbirds off a feeder, and a hummingbird that has been chased off often stops coming. So a wasp problem is not merely unpleasant; it can cost you the feeder entirely for the rest of the season.

They are also less purely nectar-driven than bees. A wasp is at your feeder for the sugar, but wasps are opportunistic and will keep returning to a known source, which makes the “move the feeder” fix less reliably decisive than it is with bees.

Six fixes

1. Eliminate every drip — and be stricter than you would be for bees

The same root cause as bees but with less tolerance. A saucer feeder cannot drip, which removes the trail entirely. Saucer feeders.

2. Wash the outside of the feeder every refill

Audubon’s point applies with force here: if the feeder is covered in sugar water, barring insects from the drinking hole will not do much good.

3. Fit bee guards

Nectar-Guard tips exclude wasps as effectively as bees — a wasp cannot part a flexible collar that only opens around a bill. Bee-proof feeders.

4. Move the feeder — further than you would for bees

Three or four feet often breaks a bee habit. For wasps, move it further and consider taking it down for two or three days first so the location stops being remembered, then re-hang it somewhere new. Hummingbirds will re-find it; a wasp scouting pattern is more likely to be broken.

5. Check what else in the yard is attracting them

Wasps that are already resident near your feeder usually have a reason: fallen fruit, an open bin, a compost heap, a soda can on the deck. Removing the ambient sugar source matters more with wasps than with bees, because it is what put a colony’s foragers on that part of your yard in the first place.

6. Locate the nest, and get help if it is close

A persistent yellowjacket problem at a feeder usually means a nest within foraging range. Do not attempt to destroy a nest near a feeding station yourself with sprays — that is exactly the pesticide use Audubon warns against, and pesticides can injure, kill and reduce population numbers of birds, bees and other animals. If a nest genuinely needs removing for safety, that is a job for a professional who knows there is a bird feeder nearby.

What not to do, again

No insecticide anywhere near the feeder. No oil or petroleum jelly on or around the ports — it damages feathers. No sticky traps hung next to a feeder, where a hummingbird can reach them.

Sugar-baited wasp traps are sometimes suggested. If you use one, put it a long way from the feeder and be aware you are advertising a sugar source in your yard, which can attract more foragers than it removes.

The honest expectation

Bees can usually be solved outright with a saucer feeder and a wipe. Wasps sometimes cannot, at least not immediately — if a colony has established nearby, you may be managing rather than fixing it until the season turns. Wasp activity drops sharply in fall.

In the meantime, a drip-free guarded feeder in a new location is your best position, and it is the same equipment that solves the bee problem. Related: bees · ants.