Excess fruit can be removed by the thinning process but once the bloom time passes there is no way to add fruit to a tree. The same applies to pear and cherries. The berry flowers have many pistils and each must receive its grain of pollen so it can contribute to the size, shape and taste of the fruit to come. Poor pollination results in small, misshapen fruits of poor quality that are slow to ripen to size. Vegetable crops assisted by insect pollination are beans, eggplant, pepper and lima beans.
Cucurbits are totally dependent on insect pollination since most are monoecious in flower habit.
Large showy yellow flowers, a highly attractive color to bees. Nectar is abundant in the large flowers. It is secreted from numerous pores of a large nectary. Cucurbit nectars are high in sucrose content and highly attractive to bees. Although flower bloom often lasts for only 1 day, cucurbit plants produce numerous blooms.