those look like just like aborted squashes. When a female flower isn't fertilized it will continue to grow a bit and then aborts it.

Sometimes the baby squash might just randomly successfully mature without being fertilized.

It is an issue of pollination, not fertilization. They are female blooms that were not adequately pollinated. Hand pollination resolves the problem. See the FAQs on this problems and how to hand pollinate linked below.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: FAQs

There is a somewhat complicated resolution. Find the male flower (the one without fruit) then find the female flower, take a q-tip or something such as that, you will take the pollen from the male and then touch the female flower parts. This should solve your problem.

Here's a video showing this but a somewhat different method.

Here is a link that might be useful: Hand Pollinating Squash Plants

Thank you. I was hoping it was just a fertilization/pollination issue. I don't believe I will need to hand pollinate now that I have so many male flowers blooming. Everything I read said males bloomed before females, but that was definitely not what happened in my garden. So is it best to remove them as I did, or should I just leave them alone on the plant?

Digdirt,
Just realized the confusion, sorry. I was using the term fertilization in the biological sense of sperm cell uniting with egg cell (having just finished teaching my daughter biology). Just realized in forums like this it would be considered adding nutrients to the soil.

You need to go out very early in the morning to pollinate by hand. Female flowers open around sunrise and then close up pretty early. Male flowers stay open longer. I grow my squash under floating row cover tents to keep SVBs off them. I grow only 3 vines at a time, so it takes 2 minutes to do the hand pollination, as long as I get out early enough.

Here is one I picked off my plants that did not get polinated.

what does SVB mean? And, is there any reason TO NOT EAT a beautiful little squash (i have yellow summer squash) that is about 4 inches long, and did not get fertilized because none of the male flowers are big enough, let alone open, for me or the bees to help with the process. Also, should i be using a fertilizer product during this time period to help the male flowers to open?

SVB is short for squash vine borer. No reason you couldn't eat the small squash. And adding extra fertilizer is not a solution. You'll just have to wait until both male and female blossoms are open at the same time.

Rodney