Wellm what you can do is take a male plant and cut off its flower petals (make sure its a mature flower). Then you take the male flower over to the (mature)female flower and rub the pllen on the females stamens. The you push them together and pull up the flower petals around the male stem closing them together with some twine. Then you know its self-pollinated if you plan on saving seeds.
If the plant is dying down, I would check out your garden conditions and try to figure out whats causing this. -cass

Good info above although I've never found any need to tie the two together. ;) There is a great FAQ here on how to do it if you want to review it. Just click on the FAQ button at the top of the page.

But if your plants are dying before even blooming then the problem is something else entirely. Do a search here on 'squash vine borer' to learn about these common squash plant killers.

Dave

Normally, bees will pollinate squash. It's only when bees don't do their work or when you want to control cross pollination that hand pollination is necessary.

Jim