These homemade hummingbird food recipes (plus shortcuts to save time and money) will make hummingbirds swarm right away!
I recently bought a new hummingbird feeder at a local hardware store when I noticed the price of a 32-ounce bottle of hummingbird nectar: $11.99. Admittedly, this store is not the cheapest in town, but it surprised me to see a bottle of sugar water selling so much.
For the past few years, my husband and I have been making our own hummingbird food, and we have learned some shortcuts in the process-in terms of nectar making and feeder replenishment of the equation.
So let’s start with the recipe we use for homemade hummingbird food, and then I will share our best tips for simplifying the whole process.
Homemade hummingbird food: 2 simple recipes
This is the hummingbird food recipe I got from my awesome stepmother. Every summer hummingbirds flock (literally) our feeder eats nearly 2 gallons of this stuff every week!
Homemade Hummingbird Recipe (Original)
8 cm. White sugar
24th century water
Mix the sugar and water in a large saucepan-you need it to hold at least 8 quarts. The bigger the better. Cook on medium-high heat until the sugar dissolves, stirring regularly. Remove from heat source. When the liquid reaches room temperature, close the lid to prevent dust and bugs from entering (we are realistic, right?). Makes about 2 gallons.
Homemade Hummingbird Recipe (Quick Version)
After we followed the recipe written above several times, my husband came up with a beautiful shortcut. Instead of adding all the water to the mixture at the beginning of the process, and then having to wait for the entire 2 gallons to cool, he tried to make a 1:1 simple syrup of 8 cups of sugar and 8 cups of water. Then, after heating and stirring the mixture until the sugar dissolved, he added 16 cups of very cold water. This makes it possible to fill the feeder with homemade hummingbird food almost immediately, saving energy because he heats less liquid-needless to say, this is how we have made hummingbird nectar since then.
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This is a quick version of the recipe format:
8 cm. White sugar
8 cm. Water + 16 degrees Celsius.Very cold water
Combine sugar and 8 cups of water in a large saucepan. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring regularly, until the sugar dissolves. Remove from heat source. Add 16 cups of very cold water. This should be enough to cool the liquid so that you can use it immediately to refill the feeder.
We use this recipe to fill our three 72 oz feeder, And usually a little bit is left at the end. In order to save the remaining liquid in the feeder replenishment solution next week, we just need to pour it into a mason jar, screw on the lid, and store it at room temperature.
Use these shortcuts to save time and money
Between our children, our home, and our work, my husband and I have been very busy-so I have been looking for ways to make things around the house more efficient.
Make faster and cheaper homemade hummingbird food
Since we make a lot of hummingbird food at least every week, I came up with a trick to shorten the time required (and save a little money in the process):
- Buying sugar in a big way, 25 lb Bags to reduce the price per pound.
- Take a gallon zip lock bag (I use store brand, and the ordinary-not freezer-variety) and add 8 cups of sugar to each bag until you fill 6 bags. (In the end you should have about 2 cups of sugar left in the big bag. I just added this to my sugar bowl so I can continue to use the big sugar bag.)
- Write the formula ratio (“8 c. sugar to 24 c. water”) on the front of each zipper bag. (This is a simple recipe, I think I will remember it in the future, but when I can’t recall it accurately next week, I have to waste time looking it up.)
- Store these bags of sugar in your pantry until you need to grab one to make another batch of hummingbird food.
- When you empty a gallon bag, just put it back into the storage room with the other zipper bag candy so that you can reuse it when you distribute another bag 25 lb A bag of sugar.
Reduce time and confusion when refilling hummingbird feeders
Refilling the feeder with homemade hummingbird food can be time-consuming and cumbersome, but it doesn’t have to be.
To speed up the process of filling multiple hummingbird feeders and reduce overflow (and the stickiness that comes with it), I used two simple tools: Plastic jug and a funnel.
After making a batch of homemade hummingbird food, I poured the liquid directly into it Plastic jug. If your hands are very stable, you can stop here and refill the hummingbird feeder directly from the pitcher’s mouth.
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However, to make things easier, I picked up a medium-sized funnel, inserted it into the refill opening of the hummingbird feeder, and poured it from the pitcher into the funnel until the feeder was refilled. I usually do this on the kitchen sink, just in case I misjudge and overfill a feeder.
Compared with other supplementary methods I have tried, this method is faster, more concise, less wasteful, and it uses the tools you already have in your kitchen. All kinds of not to love?
Cost comparison: let’s do the math
Picture from Kevin Schneider from Know almost
Now that you know how to make your own hummingbird food — and how to simplify the entire process from saucepan to feeder as much as possible — let’s go back to the 32-ounce bottle of hummingbird nectar that I found on the local hardware shelf for $11.99. This is actually more than it would cost me to buy a 25-pound bag of sugar at the local grocery store, so let’s do the calculations:
The recipe in this article can make 2 gallons or 256 US fluid ounces of homemade hummingbird food. At 32 ounces, a bottle of hummingbird nectar bought in the store is 1/4 of the US liquid gallon. We need to buy 8 of these bottles to get the same number of bottles produced by our formula-$95.92, plus the amazing cost of tax!
On the other hand, a 25-pound bag of sugar costs me 11 dollars. There are approximately 50 cups of sugar in a 25-pound bag, and each cup costs 22 cents. The above recipe uses 8 cups of sugar to make 2 gallons of sugar, and the total sugar cost is $1.76.
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If we break it down further, we will see We can make 1/4 gallon (32 ounces) homemade hummingbird food for 44 centsEven considering the cost of water and energy used to make the recipe, you almost certainly end up spending less than $1 per gallon.
Since we eat about 2 gallons of homemade hummingbird food every week, we spend between 8 and 10 dollars a month.In our opinion, this is a small price to pay for the fun we get from watching these wonderful birds-and a lot of If we buy pre-made hummingbird nectar from the store, the price will be lower than the price we paid!
What do you think?
What is your favorite recipe for homemade hummingbird food? How can you simplify the process of making hummingbird food and refilling the feeder?
Let me know in the comments!
This article was originally published on August 3, 2018.
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Merin Porter (Merin Porter) is a writer, otaku, volunteer gardener, and the editorial content director of The Grow Network. When she is not busy managing me and crossing for TGN’s communication work, she likes spending time with her husband and children, hiking, skiing, volunteering for a local gardening organization, caring for her traditional chicken flock, and continuing her pursuit of perfection Homegrown tomatoes.
