That is interesting. Have never heard that. Wish I could help with offering a possible solution but I know very little about hummingbirds and/or bees. I will search to try and find out. I am also good friends with a county agent and will ask him if I think about it next time I see him at coffee. Found this interesting read on hummingbirds. Makes me wish more people would hang feeders for the little guys. http://www.hummingbirds.net/hainsworth.html Much more important info on the link than this but imagine back in the days of hunting & gatherering (I think this will bring red into this thread) and a cave man stumbled onto an "All You Can Eat" Mr. Gattis pizza. How much easier would their lives been?
Hummingbirds need far more energy to hover than most bird do. They eat all of the time. Pure sugar is a godsend to them. Hang a feeder near a window where you can observe them. Hummingbirds will fight each other for exclusive access to the sugar. Serious fighting. All that sugar gets them really pumped up. This literally happened with humans 10,000 years ago. After millions of years of evolution as gatherers of fruit and vegetables and scavengers of meat, humans had to spend all day looking for food, had to keep their number low, and they had to keep moving around because they depleted local food supplies rapidly. Then they learned how to grow wheat. Suddenly, they could collect enough grain at harvest to make bread all year. They could settle down, in fact they had to stick around the farms. They could feed hogs, cows, and chickens. They had time for leisure and could make crafts and tools and just time to think and get smarter. It paid to congregate in larger numbers for protection and for agricultural efficiency. Adding a huge amount of protein and carbs to their diet made them stronger, bigger, and smarter. It was the start of human civilization. Downside . . . we still haven't yet fully evolved to eat so many carbs. We can't digest gluten at all and many are allergic to it. Plus carbs turn to sugar in the body so it made us prone to diabetes. But . . . the first bread was flatbread . . . how long do you suppose it took them to try it with some meat, oil, and veggies on top? Especially since they had also learned to turn grain into beer, which is essentially liquid bread. Everybody meet at Ogg's for pizza and beer.
It might be that we're in an apartment setting. The only "real" window we can hang anything at is our french double doors that open to the porch. But the shrubbery and trees that they have on the property, most have some sort of blooming flowers on them, and then the big wooden porches with tons of little corners for their nests. I'm sure this all lends to the wasp/bees problem... I think I will try and find a solution though, i've always enjoyed watching the hummingbirds, my parents had several feeders all over the back of the house growing up (like 10), our yard was like a retirement center for them.
Had our first confirmed sighting this morning then again this afternoon. I knew you'd know something like that and enhance this thread.
Here's one link. I found several. Just hit a search on how to keep bees out of hummingbird feeder, if you want more ideas. Good luck. http://blog.duncraft.com/2009/11/16/how-to-keep-bees-out-of-your-hummingbird-feeders/
I stumbled across this today. http://justonemorepet.wordpress.com/tag/hummingbirds/ I think you hummingbird fans out there might enjoy.
