Funny......I decided to try this on my butternut squash, 'cause when the female flowers finally opened, the fruit would be aborted. I just thought the male flowers were too far away from the females (I have them on a tall trellis and the male blossoms are on the bottom and the females on top). So I went out with a q-tip and tried to fertilize the female flower myself.......but I couldn't 'see' any pollen on the q tip. Having read about other people not seeing either, I'm thinking it's just too small to see. I think we're used to seeing that yellow pollen stuck to bee's, etc. Anyhow......it's a good suggestion to force them to have sex by cramming the male flower's whatchamacallit into the female blossom. (Sorry to be crude). :)

I go out every morning to look for female flowers on the squash plants and manually bring them some pollen from the abundant male flowers. If they just started producing flowers, you don't need to pollinate them. What you need to do is be patient. There must be a dozen existing threads on this same issue throughout this Vegetable Forum. The pollen is there where it should be in the male cuke blossoms, but again, just wait. What you need to do is be patient and wait a good couple of weeks. No need to force them. It's normal in the early stages of when a squash/melon plant starts producing flowers for fruit to abort and for there to be a flush of male and/or female blossoms. Consider it the puberty stage for the plants. The plant needs to mature before it is ready to create fruit. Have faith that nature has genetically programmed everything to happen at the proper time. And have patience. It's normal. In the meantime, if you have squash blossoms, eat the blossoms. You decide how you prefer them. Some people get up early to harvest before sunrise so they get squash blossoms before they open for a crisp cone shape. Others like them partially open for cheese stuffings: Recipes for Stuffed Squash Blossoms

It's normal for males to dominate before females start to bloom. Even then you will see pretty much one female to every ten males. To the poster who thinks his male flowers are dying off: all pumpkin flowers bloom for only a few hours every morning before they die off. As for not cutting the male flowers, I disagree. I've been growing pumpkins going on ten years now and if there are no female flowers to pollinate, then I will cut the male flowers just before they start to shrivel. I've yet to get a diseased plant doing this. I cut the male flowers because they are delicious to eat. So if you don't get pumpkins, you can enjoy cooking and eating the male flowers throughout the growing season. I cut off the stem, gently rinse them under cold water and saute them after dredging through a thin whole-wheat pancake batter - yum! BTW. I should mention that pumpkins are very difficult to hand pollinate. You'r e better off putting out bee loving flowers early in the season in order to get your location established on the honey bees routes. Ants do a pretty good job also, so if you see ants around your pumpkin vines, then do not try to exterminate them. If you do want to hand pollinate, then use a very soft artists brush and lightly stroke the pistol of a male plant (you should not see tons of pollen - in this case a little is too much), then lightly stroke the stamen of the female plant (again a little is too much). Even then you are not likely to succeed with hand pollination.

More than likely those blossoms did not get polinated and if they do not get pollinated they will simply shrivel up and die. If this is happening to most of your blossoms you may need to hand pollinate.