# Help! Hummingbird feeders covered in bees...



## Bee Feeder (Jul 27, 2009)

Hello Everyone,

I'm a complete bee newbie, and a couple of weeks ago, a swarm of bees found my hummingbird feeders. I went to fill up my feeders, and found them inundated with bees (I had no bee-guards on my feeders because the hummingbirds prefer them without the bee-guards, and up until now, that hasn’t been a problem).

Well I didn’t want to hurt the bees, so I decided I’d feed them too, but in a location about forty feet from the hummingbird feeders. I put bee-guards back on the hummingbird feeders, to discourage the bees from that location, and adapted a large, two pint hummingbird feeder for the bees, by leaving off the top part of the plastic feeding base, and floating slices of a wine-cork in the nectar, so the bees would have something to sit on while they ‘sipped’ on the two pints of nectar. 

Well the bees love their new ‘bee-feeder’, but they aren’t sipping the nectar – they’re quaffing it, at a rate of *half a gallon per day*! And, if I don’t happen to realize that the ‘bee feeder’ is empty at around noonish, then the bees make their way back to the hummingbirds feeders, and start pestering the poor hummers again.

I guess I could go out and buy another ‘two pint feeder’, and leave two feeders out at a time so I can at least get through a day without having to refill the 'bee feeder' (it’s not that easy to take it away from them – they don’t want to get off it).

I’ve made the bee nectar the same strength as for the hummers – one cup of sugar to four cups of water. And, I’ve provided another bee-adapted hummingbird feeder that just contains water. They don’t really like that one too much, and only try it when they’re absolutely desperate.

Where I live is so hot and dry – temps of close to 100 F, and tinder dry for at least the last month, and no expectation of rain for the next two to three months. I understand that these gentle little bees are probably thirsty, but they are making life very uncomfortable for the hummers that I’ve dutifully fed year round for the last three years. Most of my hummers have given up now, and gone elsewhere 

These are really gentle bees – I suspect they may be the stingless type, since I’ve been interacting with them, and blowing them off feeders etc, and have not been stung, even though I may have deserved it a couple of times.

I'm willing to continue to feed these bees, because I don’t want them to die, but my newbie guess is that my new ‘best bee friends’ are not a wild hive, but an escaped commercial hive that has always been fed sugar water to maximize honey production. My reason for thinking this is that at first, I didn’t realize just how hungry/thirsty the bees were, and when I went out later to see how they were doing, the feeder was bone dry, and about 10 of the bees were lying dead in the feeder, I’m assuming from getting too hot and too dry; it’s like these bees don’t know how to do anything else but eat from a sugar-water feeder.

What I find odd is that the local bumble bees are quite happy buzzing around the starthistle etc, and never go near the hummingbird feeders or the adapted bee-feeders. How come they aren’t desperate for sugar-water too? 

I’m happy to have the bees around, but right now, I'm a slave to them, and where’s the point if all they do is guzzle sugar-water? I’ve never seen any of them with a speck of pollen on their back legs.

I can't even collect honey from them since their hive is not on my property. I suspect it's in an old open shed on a neighboring property.

Any advice, suggestions, sugar donations or comments would be much appreciated.


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## knpeterson (May 18, 2009)

Beefeeder, I feel your plight. I raise bees and I like to feed my hummers too. I was able to do both successfully until a week ago when my bees finally found the hummingbird feeder. Poor hummers have been pushed off and have to feed on flowers in the yard and my large mimosa tree. I have been setting up feeders at my hives to try to discourgage the use of the bird feeders. No luck...they just drain all of them. My bees need the sugar water too but I wish they were not so greedy! I quit feeding the hummers for about a week to see if the bees would forget about their feeder and just use their own. I filled them back up yesterday and in about 20 min it was black with bees.


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## dragonfly (Jun 18, 2002)

One of my hummingbird feeders is a "HummZinger" brand. The way it's constructed, it's pretty much bee-proof.


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## Bee Feeder (Jul 27, 2009)

Hi KNP,

How much sugar-water do you normally feed to your bees? Are you in a hot, dry part of the country too?


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## Bee Feeder (Jul 27, 2009)

Hi Dragonfly,

I don't like to use the all-plastic feeders because it's so hot here, and I think the plastic may leach into the sugar water when it gets hot, so I go with feeders that have glass containers that screw onto a small plastic saucer base. Even though the bees can't get at the feeders with the bee guards on, a few bees will camp out on the feeder, and pester the hummingbirds. the hummers are so small, I imagine it must be like a human being pestered by a bumptious dog.


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