Have bees taken over your jelly feeders and scared away the Orioles and Catbirds?

We had almost taken down our Oriole feeders because the bees had become relentless at the jelly. Instead we decided to try something new we had read about and I’m sharing it with you because it worked – it immediately drove away 99% of the bees:

We took down one of the two Oriole feeders we had out and put whole cloves in the nectar ports and in the ant moat. Then we sprinkled ground cloves all over the top of the feeder. We put the feeder back up and bees flew around it for a bit, but stayed on the feeder without the cloves. Then we did the same with the second feeder.

We also put out just the bottom of a third Oriole feeder, added some jelly and put that on the pole next to the other two feeders. We did this because we read that bees could become angry, so it’s best not to totally remove their jelly source.

The light was really bad on the feeders in the morning, so I apologize for the poor quality of the photos but look – the Orioles and Catbirds came back! There were still a few bees buzzing about, but they were not bothering with the feeders with the cloves! Success!!