Pure cane sugar is the gold standard when it comes to feeding hummingbirds. This is what has been used for years and it works. But for those who cannot get cane sugar (some people in Canada have told me they can only get beet sugar), the good news is that it doesn’t make a difference. Both cane and beet sugar are fine for hummingbirds.
There are people who say they can taste the difference, such as master chefs and master bakers. They must have better palates than I do, because I have tried and I cannot taste the difference. Many people are afraid of beet sugar because the source is genetically modified beets. But the part of the beet that is modified does not end up in the end sugar product, which is pure sucrose. The sucrose molecule in cane and beet sugar is the same. Beet sugar is slightly cheaper, but only by pennies.
My hummingbirds showed no preference between cane or beet sugar. I did an experiment on the Studio City live cam and put cane sugar in some of the feeders and beet sugar in others. I changed the position of the cane and beet sugar feeders several times so the birds would not know what sugar was in the feeder. All the feeders emptied at the same rate, so my hummingbirds showed no preference.
The important thing you need to know about which sugar to use is that you must use only processed white sugar in your feeders. “Processed white sugar” sounds terrible, doesn’t it? This sugar was made to make it more attractive to humans. White sugar doesn’t change the color of some food ingredients. White icing on the cake looks much better when it is pure white, right?
But in making the sugar white for humans actually made it safer for hummingbirds. Organic cane sugar, turbinado sugar and other sugars that are raw are not pure white because they contain iron. The processed white sugar removes it.
Iron is a mineral that is not processed well by hummingbirds the same way it is by humans, making it dangerous for them. Too much iron will give them a disease called iron hemochromatosis and it is fatal. In 2001 the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum killed all their hummingbirds. They had 25 hummingbirds in their aviary and over a period of three months all but one of them had died. The necropsies on the hummingbirds revealed the birds died of massive amounts of iron in their liver and in the cells of their GI tract. The birds were captive and were consuming iron in their nectar.
Nobody knows how much iron you are putting in your nectar when you use iron-containing sugars. But why would you take the chance and feed any iron to them at all? Please stick to white sugar for your nectar.
Other sugars:
- Confectioner’s sugar: It’s white, but it also contains corn starch. You do’t want to be putting corn starch in your hummingbird feeders.
- Baker’s sugar: It’s white and finely granulated for bakers. Yes, this is pure cane sugar and you can use it if your are wealthy. It’s expensive!
- Honey: NO. It is good for us but bad for them. Honey and water promotes the growth of a yeast known as candida. A hummingbird with a candidiasis infection of its tongue will die of starvation, as it causes the tongue to swell to the point where it will be unable to feed. Do NOT put honey in your feeders.
Now you know what to put into your feeders, but what concentrations should you use?
The tried and true and recommended method is to mix four parts water with one part sugar. That provides the hummingbirds with plenty of sugar and that is the recipe you will most often see. There is really no overwhelming reason to change it.
But contrary to what a lot of people think, making the food more concentrated will not kill the hummingbirds. It will not give them kidney or liver disease. If you look at the botany literature, you will find that flowers have been measured to have from 10% up to a whopping 70% sugar. A four to one solution gives you about 18% sugar, so you have a lot of leeway.
A three-to-one solution might be useful when hummingbirds are bulking up for migration. It also freezes at a lower temperature than four-to-one, which is useful for those overwintering Anna’s in the Pacific Northwest.
But you have to understand that the three-to-one solution will also more easily attract bees, so I wouldn’t routinely mix the nectar this way. It will also pull the hummingbirds away from their pollination duties, as the hummingbirds will always be attracted to flowers providing more concentrated sugar than your feeder. You should supplement them rather than being their main food source.
Now if I lived in Arizona and it was 115 degrees outside, I would change my solution to five to one or five parts water to one part sugar. At those temperatures hummingbirds need extra water. With the weaker solution, they’re getting everything they need from your feeders and they don’t have to drink your nectar and then find a separate water source.
So sometimes there are reasons to change the concentration of your solution, but most of the time keep it four parts water to one part sugar.
