I recently made a very surprising discovery concerning homemade hummingbird nectar, which is that beet sugar can be used to make homemade nectar. Did you know this? I’m not sure if my mom was aware of this or not, but I’m sure if not she would have found the discovery fascinating. She so enjoyed attracting hummingbirds to the yard and as a result always had many feeders and therefore was often refilling them. I believe that my mom would have alternated between the two types of sugar just to try and find out if one was more popular then the other.
I myself have always thought it only safe to use white table sugar in making homemade hummingbird nectar, but it turns out that you can also use something known as beet sugar. I’m not sure if this can actually be purchased or if they are talking about the natural sugar produced by the beet plant.
It turns out that testing has been done and that white sugar and beet sugar have been found to be equally good for use in hummingbird feeders. There is no significant difference nutritionally between the two types of sugar. There is only a minimal difference in mineral content and that is of no importance.