Squash and pumpkin

Value to bees

Nectar

High

Pollen

Very high

As a honey crop

Not a honey source

Which bees, and why

In the Americas, squash bees of the genera Peponapis and Xenoglossa specialise on Cucurbita exclusively, forage before dawn when the flowers open, and males sleep inside the closed male flowers. They are frequently more effective than honey bees and are present in most North American squash fields whether anyone stocks bees or not.

Enormous open trumpet flowers with no access difficulty whatsoever — the constraint is timing, not architecture.

Worth knowing

A generous nectar and pollen source in the early morning, and unavailable for the rest of the day.

Flowering

In flower

June to September (northern hemisphere)

Individual flowers open for a single morning and close by midday, which puts a hard limit on when pollination can happen.

When nectar flows

Generous per flower — the blooms are very large and hold substantial nectar — but the window is only a few hours each morning.

Year-to-year variation

Not a honey crop in any commercial sense, because the flowers close by midday. The economic relationship is pollination, not honey.

Growing it

Conditions

Full sun, rich moisture-retentive soil, and a frost-free growing season. It is a hungry and thirsty crop.

Size

Trailing to 3 m or bushy to 1 m, depending on variety.

Native range

Mesoamerica, and among the earliest domesticated plants in the Americas — squash cultivation predates maize.

Suits

Small gardens, Large gardens, Farm scale

• Every fruit requires pollen moved from a male flower to a female one, so poor fruit set is usually a pollination problem rather than a feeding one.
• Hand-pollinate in the early morning with a paintbrush if fruit is setting badly — the flowers close by midday, so afternoon attempts fail.
• The first flush of flowers is usually all male, which alarms new growers every year and is entirely normal.

What it looks like

A sprawling annual with large rough lobed leaves and enormous bright orange-yellow trumpet flowers, the female ones sitting on a visible miniature fruit and the male ones on a plain stalk.