What is an ant moat on a hummingbird feeder

What better way than to successfully prevent ants getting to a hummingbird feeder, than with a simple cup or trench filled with water.

What is an ant moat on a hummingbird feeder can be a cup with a hook in the center, and a hook fixed to its outer bottom. Hang a feeder to the underside, while the hook inside the cup hooks off a bracket. Fill the cup with water to stop ants in their track. Similarly, an ant moat like this can be installed on a feeder.

Have you ever seen water or a ditch surrounding a castle to prevent a full on attack by the enemy - well an ant moat works the same way with no bridge at all for crossing over.

Ant moats pre-installed on a hummingbird feeder is filled with water, to which ants will unfortunately drown. Already installed ant moats requires no fuss, just fill it up with water and continue to replenish when it drops a level as water evaporates in the sun or heat.

Personally, my best ant moats for hummingbird feeders are the independent, hanging style ant moat cups for use on hanging feeders only.

Hook the ant moat cup to the feeders bracket or object its suppose to hang off; while hooking feeder itself to the hook attached under the cup, and away you go.

Ant moat cups are filled with water to trap ants in their tracks with an option to easily disassemble it all for cleaning and maintenance.

Ants that do end up on a hummingbird feeder have not arrived via this ant moat; only way ants can get onto a feeder is if they climb onto it via an unexpected accessible route - or indeed if ants were actually blown onto the feeder.

How to use ant moats on a hummingbird feeder is to fill it with water, and that's it...

With an option to use sugary-water to attract ants into the trap can help a bunch, as you can be sure they are only interested in getting to this trap.

You can use Vaseline in an ant moat to be sure ants do in fact get stuck, yet will not need to be replaced it as often as you would with water.

Ant moat is a water filled trench

What is an ant moat on a hummingbird feeder is simply a cup filled with water, to which will essentially trap, and therefore drown ants before they reach the hummingbird feeder.

Ants can only descend on a hummingbird feeder, thus the trap must be set to stop them ever reaching the body of the feeder. Ants will only get to the hanging point, though to go beyond this area will be impossible.

What ants will meet up with is a cup filled up with water, whereas ants will climb into the cup and drown.

Ants won't get any closer to the hummingbird feeder body itself, with the nectar reserved for the hummers themselves - with no ants blocking up the port wells.

Moats surround a castle with a main access point only, in a hummingbird feeder moat there's no accessible point. Its completely cut off between the feeder and the point at which where it hangs off or is mounted.

Ant moats are ditches, in the shape of a cup for all hanging style feeders or a trench surrounding a disc shaped hummingbird feeder, which happen to be your best option.

Moat hangs or pre-installed

Ant moats are likely to be bought later down the road by you as you come to realize the ant infestation around the hummingbird feeder is deterring hummers.

Here comes a simple cup that has an hook protruding out of it, in which this is the area where you fill it with water. And then there's an hook below it, to which its where the hummingbird feeder hangs off.

No fuss, no complications, as the ant moat is a simple divide between the hummingbird feeder, and the object its hanging off.

Simple hooks are used to install this device with an option to remove it within seconds.

Similarly, there's such a thing as a pre-installed ant moat on many types of hummingbird feeder - with no additional attachment needed.

In the disc, or flat shape hummingbird feeders, its normally hung using a steel bar. This bar is attached to the feeder in the center. At this center point the hanging bar enters into the feeder, to provide depth to fill up this pre-installed cup with water.

To understand you have or may receive and ant issue later, go far the pre-installed ant moat on top of a flat hummingbird feeder, or just buy an ant moat attachment later.

Limited to hanging feeder only

I have to tell you for an ant moat on a hummingbird feeder to function, the feeder in use must be one that hangs.

Of course you can put a hummingbird feeder on a tabletop, or use a hummingbird feeder that sticks to a glass window. Its therefore likely ants will simply climb up and around this type of feeder - while avoiding the need to descend on the feeder.

Hummingbird feeders must hang to divert ants to climb down on the hook for hanging, to then enter the cup full of water to stop them in their tracks.

Window hummingbird feeders can be installed with an ant moat trench surrounding it, but its easy to forget to use such a unique design hummingbird feeder.

When hummingbird feeders are stood up on a flat surface such as on a table, ants can quickly converge on it if it has nectar on the exterior.

Limit your hummingbird feeder style to hang only, that way there's only one route ants can take to access it. This single route will be blocked off with a watery death trap that awaits, with ants never seen to successfully cross.

Last line of defense

When you have an ant infestation in your yard, these ants will soon move onto a hanging device filled with sugary water the ants are drawn to.

If you can predict this happening before it does, you can buy a flat or disc hummingbird feeder with a pre-installed ant moat. If not, you may prefer the upside down bottle style, to which an ant moat can be included.

If you fail to buy a hummingbird feeder with a pre-installed ant moat, than simply buy an inexpensive ant moat cup to hang.

Ant moats remain your last line of defense, with only a water filled cup or trench stopping ants accessing the feeder, and therefore feeding on the nectar to which is sure to be a nuisance to hummers.

If ants continue to be seen on the body, at the port wells or indeed appear to be floating within the nectar bottle - with a ant moat cup hanging or if its a pre-installed moat - it could be because you created an unexpected land bridge.

Ant moats are faultless, with no ant possibly accessing the hummingbird feeder if attached or used to hang.

How ants may of accessed the main body of the feeder is if the wind blew them onto it by chance, or indeed they dropped onto from above.

Ants will climb and not purposely drop to land on a feeder, and I don't expect there's much you can do about it, but its not a big issue for most of us.

Conclusion

What is an ant moat on a hummingbird feeder is a cup or trench full of water to stop ants getting at the valuable nectar in the feeder itself.

Ants only need to climb onto the body of the hummingbird feeder, thus an ant moat is designed to prevent them ever reaching it. Ant moats only need to be filled with water with ants simply entering it, then drowning.

Its not possible for ants to swim to the outer sides to proceed to climb onto the feeder, so an ant moat is a very effective method for keeping off ants on the feeder.

Ants will descend down onto a hummingbird feeder from the point the feeder is hanging off - such as a bracket, branch or random object in the yard ants can access.

And that can only be a good thing as ants are walking into a trap rather than finding another way around. No way can ants access a hummingbird feeder with a ant moat in place - and if you do see ants on a feeder, it could be the wind blew them on it.

For an ant moat to work it must only be used on a hanging hummingbird feeder, whereas a window mounted or tabletop placed feeder can provide ants all sorts of ways to get to the nectar.

Ant moats are your last line of defense, without it ants have full reign over the feeder with nothing else made available to stop them.

Share this article: