They are probably not getting fully pollinated or pollinated at all. Do you have plenty of bees around? If not I had the same problem and I just took the male and female blossom and touched them together to pollinate them.

Hi mattml,

I had a heck of a time with mine doing the same thing as you described. I found out the reason was is that they were not getting pollinated so i ended up hand pollinating mine and now i have at least two that i'm pretty sure are gonna grow up and get eaten!!! And lots more to come hopefully! There's some pretty detailed info on hand pollinating on this web-site. Good luck to you and HAPPY GARDENING!!

Karl

Something we all need to remember is that honeybees are not as plentiful as once they were. They have been sadly and greatly affected by something called Colony Collapse Disorder, and experts don't know what is causing it. Honeybees just fail to show up at the hive, no one knows where they go if at all, and hives are empty for no apparent reason. Some have even blamed cell phones for scrrewing up a bee's ability to track its way, but that has been dismissed. Those who are studying this disorder still don't know the answer.

In the meantime, I don't know about you guys, but I have seen very few honeybees in my garden. I used to keep a hive in my backyard, "the girls," but lost it several years ago to the the varroa mite and I just never repopulated it. I just dismantled and sterilized my equipment and that was it. But even without my own hive, I used to see plenty of honeybees in my garden. Alas, no more.

So it looks like we're going to have to help ourselves by hand pollinating. I hope they find out what's wrong with the honeybees soon. Billions of dollars are being lost in the agricultural industry because of this. Professional Apiarists have lost tons of income. We depend so heavily on those girls.

Here'a a site where several articles describe the problems with CCD. Sorry to post so much today, but it's a subject close to my heart and mind.

http://riley.nal.usda.gov/nal_display/index.php?info_center=8&tax_level=2&tax_subject=10&want_id=1322&topic_id=1006&placement_default=0

aulani - thanks for sharing that information about the bees, alot of what you said was news to me. Now, I feel truly blessed, and will try everything to protect this little fellow.
{{gwi:95997}}

Thanks for the suggestions. I do see plenty of bee's around (not as many as in the past, but there are always some in the backyard doing their work). In any case I will try hand pollination to see if that helps. We're going through an abnormally hot week this week (110 degree's at my house yesterday), so I plan on waiting until after the heat wave passes - prog'd for this Friday.

Matt

Hand pollenating is pretty easy to do. In the future(next season) plant some flowers/herbs that will attract pollenators to the immediate area. Btw, honey bees aren't the only pollenators.

When the plants are growing "like crazy" like they were here recently with so much rain, they will not be so interested in raising babies but rather they want to grow more vines for about 10 days.....and then settle down to raising a fanily. It could be a temporary hormone thing.