One day I was in the store and I decided to buy sugar.  I was in the Grocery Outlet.  Do you have those in your area?  Have you ever been to one?  My parents used to go and I wrinkled my nose at that, thinking it was a bunch of weird off-brand stuff.  Then one day I went in there and I discovered brand name stuff for about half the price as you find in regular grocery stores.  Granted most of the stuff in there is snack food and basically over-processed food, but we do eat bread and often times you can find it there for half the price as the other stores.  I had seen C&H Pure Cane sugar there before so I thought I would drop in and get some.  I mean, if I am going to buy what I consider to be less-than-healthy food, I might as well spend less.  Well, they didn’t have any and I didn’t want to go to another store, because really?  It’s sugar.  So I saw something that attracted my attention.  It was  Zulka Morena Pure Cane Sugar.  The package said that it was less processed than other sugar and it was organic so I thought I would give it a try.  I discovered something interesting about it.

This sugar is not white like C&H Pure Cane white sugar yet it is not brown either.  It is off white.  Well, when I used it I notice things in it.  What type of things, I don’t know.  They could be pieces of bugs or leaves.  They kind of look like pieces of leaves.  But it somewhat turned me off of using it.  I put it in my sugar container, but I would reach for some other sugar I had before I reached for it.

One day my husband told me to stop by the store to pick up sugar because he was going to make hummingbird food, I said we have sugar.  I actually thought I had seen another bag of white sugar in the closet, but when I got home and looked all we had was the Zulka Morena.  It is used like regular sugar.  It is “regular” sugar it is just processed less.  So I talked him into using it.  He didn’t want to.**updated 04.29.18

Well, he made the food and it came out kinda tan.  It was not clear/white like when we use our familiar white sugar.  It wasn’t cloudy, it was just colored.  I was kind of concerned, thinking perhaps it wouldn’t be good for the birds.  I wondered if they would care.  I wondered if they would notice a difference.  I wondered if they would like it.

The reason I had him make the food (he is the hummingbird food maker in the house so when it is needed, he makes it) was because I had seen some hummingbirds flitting around the empty feeders.  So I was thinking when he put full ones up they would be there.  But there were not. I was worried.  I thought that the food must not be good.  I thought they didn’t like it.  Usually, when we see them at the feeders and we put food out they are right there!  But they weren’t.

I am gonna say it took at least a week for them to come.  But then, it seemed like when I looked out the window, they were always there.  But oddly enough, they were only at one feeder.  Usually they will eat off of both.  One more than the other, but both.  This time – I had seen them at the other feeder once or twice, but they actually emptied one out before they used the other.  So that means that the unused one was there for even longer than the first one.

Our feeders are in the sun.  SUN.  Sometimes the bottles start to have stuff grow in them.  This isn’t good for the birds.  So it is a drag when that happens.  And sometimes it can happen fast.  I mentioned the sun because I figure that the sun is a contributing factor to the growth in the bottles.  It could be the shade.  Either way, sometimes it happens really fast.

You may or may not know that hummingbirds don’t suck the nectar out of the feeders.  Their beaks are not straws.  I had thought that until I saw one stick its tongue out.  So they actually stick their tongue into the feeder.  I believe that the way they eat helps contribute to the stuff growing in the bottles.  So a busy feeder with a few hot days stuff can grow pretty fast.

Well, it is my opinion – I don’t think my hubby agrees with me – that this sugar does not grow stuff as fast.  We had the bottles out there a long time and there wasn’t the weird stringy black stuff that has seen to pop up really fast in the feeders in the batches we made before these last ones.  I think it is cool.

I just cleaned the feeders and my hubby is going to come home and make food tonight.  So we will have them up again by tomorrow.  I am going to watch them again closely and see.  I know there are many things that can contribute to the stuff growing in them, but it seems our last few batches have gotten it awful fast.  So we will see how this new batch fares.

At least the birds seem to like the sugar.  They don’t care about the color.  Who cares that it is not clear, as long as it is not red (the red dye is not good for the birds).

Do you feed the hummingbirds?  Do you have hummingbird feeders?  What type of sugar do you use? What is your recipe?  What type of sugar do you use?

**updated 04.29.18 – please see comments below, as this type of sugar has traces of iron in it and hummingbirds have a low tolerance to iron.