Every year brings it's successes and failures and often the failures are due to nature and out of our control. Frustrating yes, but to be expected.

Cucumbers tend to die off at some point for who knows what reason. They aren't considered by many to be long lived plants. In terms of small, misshapen cukes that do nothing these are often non pollinated cukes. Pretty normal and usually self correcting as the season goes on, but some years stuff just happens ;)

Take my area as an example of how unpredictable things can be due to weather. Spring had record setting rain and flooding. Summer has yet to break 90F by day and the nights have been so cool that we just keep our windows open whereas by now we would normally have them closed because the nights stay too warm. The end result is that many warm season plants from flowers to veggies are weeks behind. I have little hope of any ripe fruit from late season tomatos since the early ones are just now starting to ripen. I have some flowers that are still tiny and haven't bloomed when they normally would be huge and in full bloom.

Disease wise there is almost none this year and most pests are minimal. Ants and mosquitos though are in plague numbers.

The humbling lesson gardeners end up learning is that no matter how sound our plan is, no matter what fertilizer we use, no matter how skilled our watering, no matter what plants/varieties we choose etc. we are all still very much at the whim of mother nature. Some years she is exceedingly kind and others she is quite cruel.

It's definately not lack of polination. They are growing to abouth the size of a golf ball, maybe a little bigger. Round and fat. Not getting long like they should be.

That doesn't convince me it isn't lack of pollination. In many cases pollination does take place, but it doesn't 'take' due to too dry/too humid/too cold/too hot whatever. Bottom line is if cukes remain small and never develop beyond that stage they are usually not pollinated.

Even if lack of pollination wasn't the technical cause I would still bet money that it is an uncontrollable environmental issue (weather).

I've noticed that my cucumbers are also getting to be shabby looking and not producing as many fruits. What does get produced is properly shaped and full so pollination is indeed taking place. Bees are hanging around too. No beetles. I just think the weather has been a real problem. We had a long, wet spring where the cukes performed like crazy and I put up dozens of pints of pickles so I'm not complaining. Then summer came and with it torrential rain and ungodly heat that caused tremendous humidity. Now it has cooled again. Yup, it's the weather.