How To Ant-Proof Your Hummingbird Feeder
Apartment Therapy’s annual Small/Cool Contest is back again! Look inside 71 homes and tell us which is the smallest and coolest. The grand prize winner will get $1,000.Start voting now!
Hummingbirds are a big hit at my house. My wife and I love them, my daughter loves them, even the cats love them (just watching them, they are indoor cats). Unfortunately, the ants love them too. More accurately, the ants love the hummingbird feeder, with its steady supply of sugar water. It does not take them long to find the feeder and once they do, they will take it over. Here is a quick and easy solution for keeping your feeder ant-free.
What You Need
Materials
• Hanging hummingbird feeder
• Large plastic cap or lid
• Hot glue gun
Instructions
1.Remove the feeder and straighten out the wire it hangs on. My feeder in the pictures above has a removable base which makes this process a little easier.
2.Use a drill, awl or heated finish nail to make a hole in the center of the lid.
3.Slide the lid down the wire until it is a few inches above the top of the feeder, with the bottom of the lid facing up.
4.Apply a dab of hot glue on each side of the lid where the wire runs through. Make sure the glue forms a complete seal around the hole.
5.Once the glue dries, fill the feeder and hang it outside. Fill the lid with water and say goodbye to the ants. The ants will climb down the wire and be stopped by the little ‘moat’ you have just created. As long as you keep the moat filled, you should be ant-free.
Additional Notes:
必须没有其他方法让蚂蚁去the feeder, such as little tree branches or flower stems, so make sure it is unencumbered. If there are many ants to deal with the cap I use in my demonstration may prove to be too small. Ants can form a bridge of living and dead bodies to walk across. If this happens, use a wider and deeper moat. Spray paint lids are ideal.
(Images:Richard Popovic)