A lack of bees in the early spring means that your summer squash might not develop. Help them out by pollinating those flowers yourself.
If the female squash blossom is not sufficiently pollinated, the fruit will abort and not develop. You can solve this problem by using a Q-tip to pick up pollen from the male flowers and brushing it inside the female flowers.
It is really easy to hand-pollinate squash blossoms using the Q-tip method. You might need to do so if the spring weather is dreary and your squash patch seems to have a lack of bees visiting.
Look for both male and female flowers on your plants. Sometimes the plants will start flowering with male flowers only. In this case one can do nothing but simply wait.
Male flowers can be identified by the smooth stem seen in back of the flowers, while female flowers have a tiny undeveloped fruit already formed, just waiting for pollination in order to grow.
Female blossom shown at bottom left while male blossom is at bottom right. Notice the difference in the stems.
Printer friendly version