How To Distract Pesky Wasps From Hummingbird Feeders In The Garden

When wasps are at the feeder, they can scare off hummingbirds and send them away hungry. Sometimes, they even sting them. You might be tempted to kill the wasps with chemicals, but using insecticides near your hummingbird feeder might make them sick, too. Instead of waging war on the wasps, why not divert their attention away by planting a pollinator garden nearby?

Distracting these stinging insects with their flower favorites is a simple step that can keep wasps far away from a hummingbird feeder and help focus them on other areas of the garden where they can do their best work. Wasps, while sometimes feared or hated, actually benefit your garden's ecosystem. They've been around longer than bees, since bees descended from them. In fact, wasps are responsible for nearly 15% of all pollination in your garden. When bee populations decline, wasps sometimes step in as go-to pollinators. They even do their part to spread flower seeds. 

Wasps protect flowers by hunting the pests like aphids, flies, caterpillars, and beetles. They eat dead bugs as well — which might sound gross to us, but it helps speed up the natural decomposition process that sends nutrients back to the soil. Of course, more aggressive social wasps (like yellowjackets) might need to be removed since they'll attack towards any motion within 3 feet of their hive. Other wasps, though, generally will be good helpers. A pollinator garden will help them and your flowers thrive. 

Your pollinator garden should contain nectar-rich flowers in yellow or white hues, since those are wasps' favorite colors. Add yellow perennials like black-eyed Susans, sunflowers, or golden Alexander. Wasps love white perennials, too, such as rattlesnake master and boneset. They prefer native flowers, so growing local varieties is always best. Unlike many other pollinators, wasps don't have a long reach with their proboscis (or tongue), so plant flat or small flowers like yarrow. 

Evergreen perennials can be good, too. Wasps fly from far away to visit fennel since they find its licorice scent irresistible. Late-blooming flowers like smooth aster also attract these pollinators. They appear in the late summer and into fall, when wasps tend to be at their most active. If you'd like to add a few annuals into the mix, go for zinnias or cosmos, two favorites of wasps. Many of these nectar-rich flowers attract monarch butterflies and bees as well. 

You also might consider adding a pollinator-friendly bee hotel. Most wasps enjoying your pollinator garden are likely to be solitary wasps, not social ones that live in colonies. While yellowjackets and others like it can travel around 1,000 feet to search for food, solitary wasps like mud daubers rarely go farther than 100 feet in search of flowers or prey, and would appreciate their own place to call home.