I think that if you have hummers around, the sugar water would NOT freeze. Put another way, if the sugar-water freezes, your hummers aren't going to survive the cold temperature anyway. Regarding lights for heating... Incandescent lights get hot, but not that hot. Unless they are only a few inches away, it would have no effect. And any breeze would eliminate that entirely. There is a physics rule about light diminishing by the square of the distance. Don't worry about the math, just know that means it fades VERY fast! :) So, unless the outside temp is going down to about 20-25 degrees, don't worry about the feeder freezing. And don't try to heat the feeder with a light bulb. Just bring the feeder inside for the night. And rest assured that if you have to bring the feeder inside for the night, there are no hummers around...

I have a bird feeder on a pole with a baffle to prevent squirrels from getting to the seed. Underneath the feeder are 3' high evergreen shrubs and in front of those various perennials: lantana, plumbago, salvias. And in amongst those, a low bird bath. I keep the whole area heavily mulched. About once a month, I carefully spray round up on the weeds. The round up has never harmed my plants which currently looks jungley and by using round up instead of pulling, the mulch is not disturbed. This has worked for 8 years. In the spring and fall, I mulch again and plant annuals too. Black sunflower seed produces the least amount of weeds. The millet stuff is a nightmare and brings in large, undesirable birds to the feeder.

Bob, Great Shot, glad to see some of your finches are already molting to their summer breeding plumage, that means spring is coming,,,Hurrah!! Fortunately we got a nice sunny 35degF day today so I was able to get a shot from my bedroom window showing my whole feeder setup. The first shot is looking east from my bedroom window. In this shot you can see my seed hopper and suet feeders on the Maple tree, which is 60ft from my camera position. This location is working very well because many of the birds roost in the Maple tree during the day. Although you can barely see it in the photo about 20ft to the right of the Hopper there is a 65ft high pine tree that affords great cover for the smaller birds. Ten feet to the left of the Maple tree there is a small Butternut tree that is a favorite roosting place for the Morning Doves. I generally see upwards of 35 doves in that tree each morning. Another 15 ft to the left is a second 60ft Pine tree and behind the feeder sight you can see an 18 acres open meadow. You can see the woods are the far side of the meadow. That woods extends for about a square mile and it is mostly old stand hardwoods. Across the road to the left of this photo is another 300 acre hardwood stand, some new growth near the road, but old stand hardwoods from about 100 feet off the road. In the foreground to the left you can see my old garment hanger with the Niger & mixed seed tubes. On the left end on top you can see the plastic bucket lid that I use for a platform feeder. From my vantage point I generally use a 300mm lens to shoot birds on the hopper, suet feeder or on the ground below the hopper, while I use a 200mm to shoot close ups of the birds on the garment rack feeders. As you can see, all the birds at my feeders seem to play nice and I see very little competition.

Lornas, There may be enough bugs out that they do not need the meal worms. If your babies are very young they wouldn't feed the meal worms anyway. If they really wanted the worms they would try to run the Robins off. Do you have an actual "meal worm feeder"? I have one that has the plexi on both sides and the holes for them to get in. I took one of the plexi sides out. The Robins feed on the ground under the feeder where worms have been dropped. If the Blues REALLY wanted the worms they would get them.