It can get hot where I live, so I clean out and refill my hummingbird feeder every couple of days. A gardening expert here told me that the sugar water can go bad quickly and harm hummingbirds. Colibri, is that true?
Yeah, if you have any yeast or bacteria sugar water is a good growth medium. Probably best to clean them and change the sugar solution at least every couple of days.
I know they recommend regular cleaning but aren’t high concentrations of sugar a preservative? the containers are clear and the solutions dyed but it should be easy to see floating debris. I think constant handling would create a greater risk of contamination both from the germs on people’s hands and also soap contamination. It’s not like flowers are washed every day.
BTW, my link shows a feeder without the traditional reservoir bottle which would make sense for cleaning.
I’ve been researching this lately as we seem to be seeing more hummers and we want to encourage them to visit.
I read in at least one article that there is some kind of bacteria which the birds introduce into the feeders from their beaks (or is it bills?) which grow like crazy in the sugar water. Its toxic to them in higher concentrations.
I will try to find the info.
Don’t know where I saw the stuff about toxins.
“High concentrations” means very high concentrations of sugar such as are found in fruit preserves or honey, where there is very little water. These items are more concentrated than the cell contents of bacteria, and so suck water out of the cells and kill them.
On this kind of scale, the sugar solutions used for hummingbirds (20-25% by weight) are very dilute. They’re an excellent growth medium for microorganisms.
There’s more of a risk allowing bacteria to build up populations over a period of time. And it’s probably better not to use soap at all.
Flowers don’t usually accumulate nectar over any period of time. Many flowers last for just one or a few days. In those that last longer, nectar usually doesn’t accumulate for more than a few hours before something comes along and removes it. Nectar spoilage is not a problem in nature.
Also, it’s best just to use pure cane table sugar, which is just sucrose. Most hummingbird flowers produce nectar that is mainly just a sucrose solution (but may also contain fructose and glucose.) Some people think sucrose is “unnatural” and want to give hummers brown sugar or honey, but these are bad for them. Brown sugar is brown because it contains impurities, and diluted honey goes bad very quickly.
When it’s hot I’ll only put a cup or so of sugar water in the feeders, that ensures I have to refill them every day or two since the birds suck them dry by then. I store the rest of the sugar water batch in a large jar in the fridge, so it’s only a matter of a quick rinse and refill most of the time. I’ve found that denture cleaning tablets work well for cleaning out feeders once they start accumulating gunk, just make sure you rinse them well after.
I’ve never understood the mentality of people who actually BUY that ridiculously priced sugar water dyed with chemicals for the hummers. Do they not know how to mix water and sugar together at home?? And red dye??? :mad: 
Probably the same people who buy bottled water.
Thanks for the detailed answer Colibri.
Red dye is not necessary. Seriously, you don’t need the red dye at all. Just sugar, water and a good feeder with some red colouring to the feeder itself. Thisis the best feeder I have, and I testify that it’s their favourite. It’s very easy to clean between fillings, and has an ant trap and a place for them to perch (and yes, they do like to perch for a rest instead of hovering).
And if you do feed hummingbirds in a place where they stay over winter, please make sure to keep up your feeders in the winter! We on Vancouver Island are starting to see colder winters now, with temperatures below freezing, but some hummers stay here all year round. Anyone can feed them in the summertime, but in January, they really appreciate a thawed, cleaned feeder! I’d bring it in at night to stay thawed, and take it out in the morning very early (5:30 a.m.) and they’d be waiting for it, I swear.
Hummers are also a great excuse to have lots of pretty flowering plants in your yard, garden or balcony.
Hey, the search engine found what I wanted! And it’s just barely zombified!
As a followup to **Colibri **or anybody else- is pure sucrose still the standard recipe? 1 part sugar to 4 parts water by volume?
Any point to using fructose, glucose, or other sugars? Brewshop has bulk dextrose for cheap. What about vitamins and minerals? Should I use mineral water?
I haven’t heard any different.
Flowers visited by hummingbirds tend to have nectar rich in sucrose, although it can also contain fructose and glucose (also referred to as dextrose). Sucrose is made up of a unit of fructose combined with a unit of glucose. Hummingbirds prefer sucrose to both glucose and fructose, and also assimilate sucrose better than glucose. So I would recommend regular table sugar over anything else.
No. Hummingbirds get their vitamins and minerals (and protein) from eating small insects. While there might be some reason to give captive hummers supplementary vitamins or minerals, this is unnecessary in wild birds. In any case, mineral water may not have the balance of minerals that they need, and they may end up getting too much of some and not enough of others.
Outstanding, thank you!
There’s plenty of bugs around, I live along a creekbed. It’s not typical territory, they like the foothills better. But I do have a bird at my feeder.
edit- is that your article? Have you written anything about the other end- hummingbird poop?
No to both questions. However, hummingbirds naturally enough urinate very frequently with highly dilute urine, since they have to get rid of all the excess water in nectar. Bird droppings are a combination of the products of the kidneys, including uric acid, the white stuff in bird droppings, plus the products of digestion, which in the case of hummingbirds will be mostly insect and spider exoskeletons. The sugar in nectar will be almost completely absorbed.