The bees are thirsty. You can't keep them away. Your only option would be to provide several alternate water supplies for the birds. Even pottery or plastic plant saucers, laying on the ground, are something that birds will come to readily. They can be placed in among your plants, but close to a hose for daily rinsing and filling.

I, too, am a newbie to this forum & am enoying the warm fellowship here.Want to add my Amen to the 'miracle to behold'; I Thank God above each time I release one of His beautiful creations, saying a prayer for its' safety on its' new life & journey, where ever it leads to. Am 63 yo happily married, retired RN, who has been a homebody since retiring due to health problems in '82, probably before most of you were born, so I feel like an 'ol timer. I feel as though I am going through my second childhood, which has turned out to be more fun, (what I remember of it), than the first. Got started in butterflies quite by accident on a trip out of town for a 'get-away' long w/e & visited a favorite plant buying spot, a State Farmers' Market. While browsing about looking for unusual plants to bring home, I heard one of the vendor's saying "They are Monarch butterfly eggs & caterpillars", which immediatly got my atttention. I went to his space & saw some plants, had no idea what they were, he said it was Milkweed, I bought one, it had a large cat on it & I knew nothing about cats, but figured with the web, I could research & find out what to do. This was 10 + years ago; the mw turned out to be bronze fennel, & the cats turned out to be a BSTs, which I gazed at for hours on end, watching the eggs & seeing my first one eating his first meal was like a 'Spiritual experience', as well as the first emerging BST, I had tears in my eyes. (Did the same thing first time I saw childbirth in nursing school!) Am a Christian, so it was like seeing the Master's hand at work, closeup & personal, if you know what I mean! The trip home was so funny, with that plant behind my hubby's head, in a clear heavy plastic plant sleeve; he was driving, & the fennel stuck up about 6 " above his head. I kept an eye on a large cat that was eating,just inches from his head, kept hearing a 'ping' every now & then, (sounded like something was hitting the plastic plant sleeve). Had no idea what it was, (hubby heard them too), he would say "What's that?" I replied "Dunno!", but found out when I got it home & saw more 'pings' which later I found out was frass! I had large long plant sleeves in my trunk, always prepared for plants, so as not to get a frown on hubby's face with the possibility of getting my car dirty. The cat kept my attention, & I kept looking back, saying 'Dear Lord, please, please, don't let him crawl on hubby's head". We arrived home after the 2 1/2 hr trip with no incidents, during which hubby kept asking me what I was looking at, to which I would mattter-of-factly reply, "My plant in the back." After unpacking the car; first thing was locating the 'mw' in my solarium, placing it in a cachepot & adding a small hand-made butterfly house that I had, making it quite attractive. After all was unpacked, I showed hubby "what I was looking at" on the trip home. The 3rd-4th instar BST was quite large, & he remarked "That was behind my head all the way home!" After having the 2 additions to our home, the solarium & a master suite, with decking running the length of the house with a large area in the center, I started collecting inside & outside birdhouses & an occasional butterfly house. That first year everybody in the family gve me b'fly & birdhouses for Christmas, & the collecting kinda got out of hand, they are everywhere! So began my passion for these lovely creatures. It took me several years to locate mw seeds, which are not native to our area & now my 'garden' or 'forest' has grown to more than 1,000 mw of many varities, fennel, parsley, Dutchman's Pipevine (first year, so I don't expect flowers, from what I have read about it)Moonflowers Angel's trumpets, many varities of nectar plants & a Catawba Worm Tree. (In our area, local word has it that the Catawba Worm Tree is supposed to be the host plant for the Luna Moth.) All of my plants are container-grown on my large deck out back of our home. Each season there tears of joy & sorrow, as some don't make it, & days when I have more than a dozen to release when hubby is in the backyard with our dog, his baby, it is a glorious time for me. I remember last year one Monarch was very hesitant to leave the pavilion, staying at the bottom while the others had lined up almost in a spiral 'take off' pattern, & I reached down & got her, checked to make sure she was okay, & held her on my finger in the sunlight, saying "Look at how beautiful the colors are! They look like somebody put glitter on her!" My poor hubby, who was hot & tired, was saying "Yeah, yeah, let it go, it will fly away". This beautiful lady flew to his cheek, & lit there just a bit! He was so surprised. I told him he just got his first 'Butterfly kiss!" He meekly smiled, called the dog, chuckling, picked her, & went in the house. You ladies know how our men are, you gottta love them, with all of their patience, putting up with our 'whims in life', for the most part supporting us in everything we do. Didn't mean to write a 'journal' here, but wanted to share how I got into this passionate hobby that has become a very important part of my life. Having several painful health problems, Lupus, Fibromyalgia, 3 failed back surgeries, being among them, it has been the greatest therapy, & God has richly blessed my life with the joy of butterflies, in fact locally I am frequently called "Butterfly Joy"..May God continue to bless all of you & thanks for having me as part of this great group.. Joy, from Coastal NC (Saw my first Monarch of this season 8-8, a male; he nectared on mw like he was starving, & gracefully flew away; y'day it was over-cast & t-storms in our area, so didn't see any more. Forecast is favorable for this week, so will be on the lookout for more). God Bless

Sorry, should have been a bit clearer, spray wasp REPELLENT spray - not poison spray - around your hummingbird feeders. Most of my feeders do not have yellow parts, so they don't attract wasps or bees, and they can't reach the nectar in my feeders. Plus, I've got tons and tons of things the bees are far more interested in, like Rosemary, Salvia, Ceanothus, Penstemon, any other California natives (like you do, too, westelle). I have lots for the hummers in my garden, too, but I really like having the hummers up close to some of my windows, so I also have feeders for purely selfish reasons - so I can see them closely when I'm in the kitchen, or in other rooms of the house. You can have both. You can try using Permethrin on the feeders themselves to keep the bees and wasps away, and it won't kill them. Birds don't have a very keen sense of smell, so it won't deter the hummers. The most important thing is to make sure you don't have feeders that drip or ones that allow the bees and wasps can reach the nectar. Dripping sugar water will definitely attract wasps, bees and ants. Be sure you have feeders that provide nectar far enough down that the bees and wasps cannot reach the nectar. There are feeders designed especially in this manner - only the hummer's long beak and tongue can reach the nectar. The wasps and bees will eventually give up and go away. And, move your new feeders. Even moving it a foot will work. The hummers will find it no problem, but the bees and wasps will take much longer, and if they can't reach the nectar, they will give up. The HummZinger is a good basin-style feeder that makes the nectar too deep for bees and wasps to reach. Patty S.

I actually got the smaller First Nature feeder about two months ago. (After the nectar in my single feeder froze in one of our random cold nights- seeing my only winter hummingbird trying to feed from it made me feel AWFUL, though it was an accident, and I rushed to bring it inside, unfreeze the whole thing and refill it). Anyway, the bees did seem to congregate around the seams of the first nature feeder, but on the advice of teatree I filled it very low and the bees only seemed interested for about a day. I also got a perky pet glass feeder (because they're on sale at Ace Hardware right now, with the mail in rebate I think they cost a dollar) and I did break down and but a Hummzinger from Amazon. I've seen the bully chasing another hummingbird, which has yet to feed from any of the feeders (that I've seen anyway), so maybe it's a female and he's courting her?