Nectar is essentially sugar water. Nectar, both natural and "man made", makes up over 95% of a typical hummingbird's diet. Hummingbirds love to sip nectar which gathers at the base of certain flowers. But hummingbirds will find your nectar feeders and will quickly realize that the feeder is an endless supply of nectar and come back and visit your feeders often. Some as often as every fifteen minutes.
It is best to make your own nectar. It is real easy and if you do your part right, you will remove all chances of feeding contaminated nectar to wild hummingbirds. Besides, most all commercial Hummingbird nectar is colored and is more expensive than it should be.
The recipe for nectar is one part ordinary cane sugar and four parts water.
Hummingbird bodies are extremely small and can be quite susceptible to very small amounts of contaminants. For this reason, it is recommended that you purify your solution. To do this, boil the water for at least five minutes. The method I prefer is to boil more water than needed which allows for whatever may be boiled off. I measure 1.5 Gal and boil it real good for at least five minutes.
I then measure four cups of sugar in a nice clean pot. Then, from the pot of boiled water I measure out sixteen cups and pour it in the sugar pot. Mix it up well and allow it to cool. Put in a convenient container and refrigerate until needed.
Some people are of the opinion that a stronger solution of nectar doesn't necessarily hurt the humminbirds and helps to bring the birds back more often.
I am of the opinion that if you use a stronger solution you are only creating the possibility of overloading the system of the tiny bird. The extra water in weaker solution certainly will not hurt the bird but the bird requires a certain amount of nurishment to survive. They can sense how much sucrose is in the nectar it drinks. Therefore, you can actually increase the visit rate by using a safe 1 to 4 solution or even a weaker 1 to 5 solution that some people actually prefer to use!
Some people have told me that they mix a stronger solution of nectar, some up to 33%. But I have read that stronger solutions can lead to liver complications for hummingbirds. I have also read that stronger solutions do not necessarily attract more birds, so why use it when a 20% solution will attract and feed wild hummingbirds quite nicely.
You don't need to use all of the nectar you mix up right away, but store any unused nectar in a refrigerator.
It used to be thought that the solution should also be colored red, as red flowers and the color red in general seems to attract hummingbirds. (Try wearing a bright red hat or shirt and sit near your feeder if you really want some action!) This is probably due to the fact that virtually all naturally occuring flowers which attract hummingbirds have red, nectar producing flowers.
In recent years, it has been determined that one particular formula for red dye was potentially damaging to humans, so who knows what it could do to hummingbirds? It has also been shown that the feeders themselves have enough of a red color to attract the birds and they quickly learn where the nectar is! And they then come back time and time again, as long as you do your part and keep your feeder clean and your nectar fresh!
One last thing. Do not use honey in place of sugar. Honey does have sucrose, but it also has contaminents which can harm the tiny system of a Hummingbird.