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Re: Squash Pollination (fwd)

In a message dated 98-02-04 08:50:00 EST, you write:

<< "For years, the Prolific Early Summer Crookneck squash has been very
 "prolific".  But this year, the male blossoms came on and died before
 the female blossoms developed, probably due to the large swings in
 temperature from week to week.  Somebody, I think it was on this list, 
 had mentioned collecting and saving the male blossoms until the females
 developed.  Any advice on how to do this - preservation, refrigeration,
 humidity, etc.  My other squash and melons seem to be doing okay but
 I've resorted to hand pollination to compensate for the absent insect
 pollinators - it's not only honey bees, the paper wasps which always had
 a very significant presence also seem to be missing this year."
 
   The male/female balance you refer to is most likely, as you say, a weather
related phenonmenon, and probably won't be repeated. 

   I'm not aware of pollen storage with squash, but pollen is routinely
gathered and saved from apples, cherries, almonds and other fruits. All kinds
of delivery systems are used. It has been dusted from helicopters, mixed with
irrigation water, and shot at the trees with shotgun shells. But the most
effective delivery system is pollen inserts at the entrance of the beehives,
through which the bees must track as they exit.

   I'm not sure about the storage conditions. I believe the pollen is frozen
for long term storage. You might check with extension folks at Washington,
Oregon, or California. The Goodfruit Grower has a web site, and may have info;
at least they have ads for suppliers of pollen. Just use a search engine, or
follow the links from our page below.

   Squash pollen should be easy to gather, as it is large and brightly
colored.

   Of course, you need to set beehives in your fields. Surely you have a
pollination beekeeper in your area from which you can rent hives for the bloom
period. 

   We had a guy here in South Carolina that had ordered bees, but forgot to
tell me that he planted about two weeks earlier than scheduled. He called me
in a panic, as they had started to pick, and were having to drop almost the
entire first picking on the ground, as they were all withered and misshapen.
We had 45 hives in place that day, so he got a good second picking. 'Course
the price dropped by then.....a real expensive mistake for 75 acres of
beautiful, irrigated yellow squash.

   There was not a bee in the field, until we put them there.  There should
have been some of the little solitary squash bees, but this is cotton country,
and they seem to have been poisoned off. I don't see them much anymore.


 Pollinator@aol.com     Dave Green  Hemingway, SC  USA
The Pollination Scene:  http://users.aol.com/pollinator/polpage1.html

Jan's Sweetness and Light Shop    (Varietal Honeys and Beeswax Candles)
http://users.aol.com/SweetnessL/sweetlit.htm
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