Many people have hummingbird feeders in their yard. These birds are quite attractive to some and it's nice to see them around a window to see the beauty of these birds. But many times there is a problem with these feeders.
Since they are filled with sugary substances to attract hummingbirds, ants tend to become a pest that will get into it to feed off it as well. While you might want to attract the birds, you definitely don't want to have an ant infestation so close to your house. Most of the time what happens is that the ants will use the pole or wire that the hummingbird feeder is attached to in order to get to the sugar. If you don't want ants around your feeder, you have to make it harder for the ants to get to it.
Generally speaking a hanging feeder off of a wire is one of the easier ways of taking care of the ant problems as it makes the distance much longer to travel for them. While this might solve your problem, you may have to go to further steps than this.
There are some substances that you can put on the wire that will make it harder on the ants. Start off with a repellent like peppermint oil. This will keep ants away as they don't like the smell. Put it on the wire away from the feeder so that you don't keep the birds away. The ants won't want to cross the path where this smell is at.
Use products that are going to be sticky or greasy making it hard for ants to travel on. These would be things like cooking sprays or Vaseline. These products applied to the wire will make the ants' trips difficult keeping them away from the feeder. Rain will wash these away, but they are easy to reapply if needed.
Ants can become a hummingbird feeder pest. Learn these simple techniques that can help control this pest problem.
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