This is the pic and I wonder of the tiny cuc-like stem is what you mean when you say female flowers
girl flowers on cucumber
Yep - those mini cucumber looking things behind the flowers are the females. If it is pollinated it will form a fruit - if not it will shrivel up and fall off...
You've got a little girl there alright!
OK, dumb question number 2: What happens if I take a q-tip, gently tap it inside a male flower and than tap it on the female. Could this actually cause pollination or is that something only a well-trained bee can do?
That'll work fine. I take the male blossoms, strip off the "flower", and just kind of squish it around in the female. I always forget to take the q-tips with me, though I bought gobs of them for that specific purpose...
I never seem to have q-tips handy, plus they fall out of my shirt pocket when I'm outside, so I do what catmad does. I strip the petals off the male flowers and just dab the stamen (or whatever that thing is called) on the center of the female flower. Most of the time you have to do it early in the morning, especially if you live in a high humidity area. A lot of the female flowers close up by noon.
If you are lucky, bumblebees will move in and take over the task of pollinating. We have a couple of brush piles, and although I haven't checked, I suspect we have bumblebees nesting in them. The queen bumble bees are the only ones that survive the winter, then they start over with a new nest in the spring.
Another option is native bees. You can buy Mason bee nests from the internet. We don't have Mason bees in ours, but the ones that use the nests sure do a good job of pollination around our garden.
Well we've got a few Bumble Bees hanging around. I just wanted to get up close and personal with my cucumber plant now that I know about their love life.
My squash are very attractive to bees, although honeybees are sadly few and far between. But I see many. many of the big carpenters and bumbles becoming very familiar with the squash blossoms in the early hours of the day.
I think more and more native bees will become prevalent now that the honeybees are scarce.