"My squash won't grow. The little squash are rotting!"

   You hear this a lot nowadays from gardeners, and sometimes from commercial
growers who don't put in beehives.  Sometimes they try to stop the problem
with fungicide -- an exercise in futility, because the real problem is
pollination.  It has a lot to do with the recent decline in pollinator
populations.

     So many people think that pollination is a single act, like flipping a
switch. The bee goes to the flower, and pollination is done.  Not so, for
most plants that need bee pollination....

     Pollination is not a "binary" act.  It's more like driving a nail.....in
commercial cucurbit fields we aim to get the bee into the female flowers
15-20 times.  Just because you see a bee, doesn't mean that you have enough
bees for good pollination.

    Female flowers?

    Visual aids at:   http://pollinator.com/squash.htm

Dave Green
The Pollination Home Page:  http://pollinator.com