Packing Tape to Keep Ants Out of a Hummingbird Feeder

littergitter
Silver Post Medal for All Time! 418 Posts

September 9, 2013

Keeping Ants out of Hummingbird Feeder - A feeder with tape on it. It's a little late in the season for this tip but if needed, it works well. I put packaging tape on my feeder to catch the ants as they crawl down to get to the sweet stuff. Since I have been doing this, I have had no ants in my feeder and the tape still works after it rains. I have been using this method for several weeks and have replaced the tape only once.

I noticed that the ants were disappearing but not showing up inside the feeder and was wondering what was happening to them. Then, I saw a bird perched on the feeder reaching up and pecking an ant off the tape.

Supplies:

1 piece packaging tape
1 piece Scotch tape

Steps:

Use a piece of Scotch tape to tape the end of packaging tape to the feeder to hold it in place as you pull the packaging tape, sticky side up, around the bottle.

Keeping Ants out of Hummingbird Feeder - Wrapping tape around a hummingbird feeder.

Overlap the packaging tape where the scotch tape is and make your cut. The tape should be sticky all around with no bridges for the ants to cross. I place a little piece of popsicle stick on the packaging tape before making the cut so I don't lose the end of the tape.