@Mouse 

I make the sugar water (1 part sugar to 4 parts water).  I mix the sugar and water in a pot & bring it to a boil on the stove.  I let it cool, & then store it in a mason jar in the refrigerator until I use it. During my busy season (July – Sept), I make up feeders ahead of time & store them in the refrigerator in ice cube containers.  I take them out of the refrigerator & let them sit on the counter for a few hours to come to room temperature before I put them outside (if I put them out while they’re cold, they will leak).  I also use cheap Teflon tape on the feeder (where the red cap screws on) to prevent leakage.  I use a small bucket of hot, soapy water with a little bit of bleach to wash the empty feeders every day.

I have used the pre-made before, but once I started getting the large number of birds, I started making my own (at the peak of the season, in August, I use more than 3 quarts a day).  When I have used the pre-made, I would not have it out for more than a week.  It depends on how hot it is.

With the sugar water, in the spring, I’ll put out enough for 3-4 days (I have 3-6 birds at that time).  In the summer (hotter temperatures), I will not have it out for more than 2 days in the larger feeder.  The smaller feeders I use are not out for 24 hours before they’re empty.

The birds seem to prefer the small feeders to the larger, flat type feeder (called a “hummzinger”).  I used to think they would prefer the hummzinger because they can sit to eat, but since I started using the smaller feeders, the number of birds I get increased.  In the “flock” of birds I get, a relatively small number of them like the sit-down meal; most prefer the small vertical feeders.

The ant moats (green & red cups): hummingbirds are drawn to red.  I would have them all be red, but when I tried to buy more, they only had the green available (for the kind I got—I didn’t want to spend a fortune on them), so I just went ahead & got some green ones. 

The small feeders I use come with yellow plastic flowers around the feeding spout.  Hummingbirds don’t care about the yellow or the flower, and I think the yellow brought the honey bees and yellow jackets I had a couple years ago—so I removed them.  I think the bees were drawn both to the yellow as well as the ability to grab hold of the plastic flower to get at the sugar water (unlike hummingbirds, they are stationary when they eat).

I do have a couple of wasps that visit the feeders now (big, reddish brown type—big legs that don’t need the plastic flower to hang onto), but as big & scary as they look, they are not aggressive toward the birds (or me), so I think we can co-exist.  I sometimes have seen the cicada killers at the beginning of summer, but never around my feeders (pic was after my quarterly pest control guy sprayed—dead cicada killer). 

I do have small containers that I’ve used that some will eat out of my hand—but I don’t know that they would hang around for a violin performance.  They are pretty used to me, though, so once they see me going about my business ignoring them, they pretty much ignore me and go back to eating. 

@ELCBK Starting now until the end of September, it is a chore—I have about a hundred little feeders that I cycle through between putting out, filling & washing, & making sugar water, etc.,.  I have a pretty good routine now so that I maybe spend 40 min combined a day on it, but it’s been a process.