How do you keep bees off of your hummingbird feeder?

[panader0]

Jeannie told me to ask the folks in the lounge. The hummers won't come around with a hundred bees in the way.

[yankeepants]

1. Once they find it they find it

I suggest taking them down and cleaning them and putting them back up in a day or so. It redirects the bees elsewhere. The hummies will come back immediately.

It's a temporary fix but maybe it will work out for you.

I live in upstate NY and we put our feeders away by 9/15 to encourage the birds to migrate. I took mine down a little earlier because of the bee problem this year.

[pitohui]

3. put your feeder back up once the bees are done for the year

don't laugh "yankee," in upstate ny in winter, you could get a rufous hummingbird in your yard

they migrate west to east, not north to south, and i believe new york state gets a couple a year

here in louisiana, we get many species and many individuals of "winter" west to east migrants, but i would not give up even in new york

hummingbirds migrate based on day length not on whether or not you put up a feeder, there isn't actually any harm done by leaving your feeder up all autumn and you increase the chance of getting a rufous, but this was the old theory from decades gone by when it wasn't known that many hummingbirds can and do migrate west/east rather than north/south

almost no northerner knows this, they are all shocked and charmed to get a winter hummingbird, i envy your future discoveries

on the gulf coast we have the benefit of many fine hummingbird researchers allowing us to band/track many different individuals of i think 9 different western species over the last 20 years

[pitohui]

2. there aren't a lot of bees these days but here's what we used to do in days gone by

we were just talking about what a huge year it is for the ruby-throat hummingbirds in louisiana

bees, not so much, but in olden times what we would do is we would have multiple feeders and at one of the feeders we would tolerate bees/wasps while running out to curse and swear if the bees/wasps tried one of the other feeders

not sure why this should work but maybe social insects tell their friends which feeder is the hassle-free feeder? i've met folk who used the same system in arizona

if that don't work, as the other poster said, take down the feeder for a few days?

a hundred bees seem extreme, my yard proportions are the reverse, i'll have a bee or two a day, but i'll have multiple hummingbirds fighting over the flowers and feeder right now because it's migration so the visitors come and try to throw their weight around and drink up all the nectar before they move across the gulf of mexico

good luck!!!