Keeping the ants out of your hummingbird feeder

I think I've found a way to keep the ants out of the feeders. It only took the ants 2 days to find them after I first hung them out. I use string to hang mine so I took them down to clean and refill and sprayed the string to the dripping point with bug spray. I let it quit dripping and put up the feeders again. It's been 3 weeks and I haven't seen one ant on them!

Whenever I take them down to clean and refill I always spray the string. I'd like to someone else to try this too see if it's not a fluke.

X

i use vasoline on mine

I used to use that but found it tended to melt when it got into full sun and contaminated the feeder.

X

X - I've done pretty much the same thing but I since I use those wire clothes hangers to hang my feeders from trees I use cut up strips of an old t-shirt and tie a couple of pieces of it around the hanger wire. I then spray them with bug spray until they are soaked through. I also make sure the cloth strips are knotted and tightly wound around the wire and they don't drip bug spray before I hang the feeder.

So far so good. Every few days I bring the wires down to add more spray (since out temps are in the high 90's it evaporates quickly).

~ Cat

Thanks for the confirmation .. I'm so delighted to finally find something that will keep the ants out. I've tried all sorts things over the years .. glad I finally found one that works!

X

I've got a couple of feeders with water moats, and they work well. The others are hung from cast iron trellis/pole thingies, and I put this sticky resin stuff called Tanglefoot around the bottom of the poles. It works very well, and doesn't melt like vasoline.