Let’s make a homemade butterfly feeder and fill it with an easy butterfly food recipe!
Now that it’s Spring all sorts of beautiful creatures are making their debut after a long winter including beautiful butterflies.
Our yard doesn’t have many butterflies right now and I am going to change that with this butterfly food recipe & homemade butterfly feeder.
This is a great way to attract more butterflies to your yard in an inexpensive and homemade way!
How to Make a Butterfly Feeder
The simple butterfly feeder is made with just two supplies — sponges and twine or string. You will also need a pair of scissors.
- Take each sponge and cut a hole in one end toward the top in the middle using the sharp end of the scissors to poke through the sponge.
- Tie twine or string through the hole and secure.
- Leave a long end of the sting/twine so you can use it to hang from a tree.
Now let’s make the butterfly food recipe (a printable version is below)…
How to Make Butterfly Food
Set aside your newly created butterfly feeder hanging sponges and let’s gather the ingredients you will need for the butterfly food recipe:
- 1 pound Sugar (about 3 3/4 cups)
- 1 or 2 cans stale beer
- 3 mashed, overripe bananas
- 1 cup of molasses or syrup
- 1 cup of fruit juice
- 1 shot of rum
Grab a wooden spoon and a large mixing bowl so we can put all of this together for the butterflies!
Steps to Making Butterfly Food Recipe
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- Mash the bananas using a fork.
- In the large bowl, mix all the ingredients well. If you find that your bananas are lumpy, continue to stir with a large spoon until smooth.
Add Butterfly Food to Butterfly Feeder
–>I recommend doing this step outside so the butterfly food mixture doesn’t drip in your home!
Dip the sponges into the mixture and allow the sponges to soak up the mixture. I did one side of the sponge then flipped it over so it was entirely coated.
Then hang the sponges from a tree limb.
You can also paint the mixture on trees, fence posts, rocks, or stumps.
Butterfly Food Recipe
This easy homemade butterfly food recipe can be made at home with ingredients you likely already have and then hung to attract and feed butterflies. Kids will love this project and so will adults!
Materials
- 1 pound Sugar
- 1-2 cans stale beer
- 3 mashed, overripe bananas
- 1 cup molasses, honey or syrup
- 1 cup fruit juice
- 1 shot rum
- Sponges
- Twine or string
Tools
- Scissors
- Large Mixing Bowl
- Wooden Spoon
Instructions
- Mash the overripe bananas with a fork.
- Combine all the ingredients in the large mixing bowl.
- Stir until the mixture is as smooth as possible.
- At the end of each of the sponges poke a hole with the end of the scissors.
- Thread the twine or string through the hole in the sponge and tie a knot leaving enough string or twine length to use for hanging.
- Dip the sponges into the mixture allowing them to soak up the liquid either dunking it or rotating to all sponge sides. This step is best done outside to decrease your kitchen mess!
- Hang the sponges from a tree limb, fence or post.
- You can paint the extra butterfly food mixture onto trees, fences, rocks and stumps.
More Feeders to Make for Your Backyard
- Make a homemade hummingbird feeder with homemade hummingbird nectar recipe
- Make a pine cone bird feeder
- Make a toilet paper roll bird feeder
- Make a fruit garland bird feeder
- I think we all need a picnic table for a squirrel feeder
More Butterfly Fun from Kids Activities Blog
- Make a colorful butterfly suncatcher craft
- Color this rainbow butterfly coloring page
- Color these butterfly coloring pages
- Color this zentangle butterfly and flower coloring page
- Color this zentangle butterfly and heart coloring page
- Follow along on how to make a butterfly out of paper
- Easy, no-mess butterfly sandwich bag craft works great for younger kids
- Make these simple butterfly snack bags
- Make this butterfly glass art
- Make butterfly collage art
Tell us about whether your new homemade butterfly feeder attracted butterflies!
