You would grow any type of bee-attracting flower that blooms at the same time as your vegetable is blooming. I think it would be hard to get seed-started flowers to bloom in N. Michigan before squash blooms opened. You may want to try putting flower plant starts in the ground. Seeded perennials might work from the second year on. Squash can be hand-pollinated. Winter squash such as butternut can be tricky in short-season climates because the male flowers seem to open weeks before the female flowers start, and that doesn't leave much time for full-sized squash to form. Even in Portland (zone 8), we only get about a 3-week window where forming squash go on to become full-sized.

The pyrethrum has to be extracted, and not just from any old daisy. There are specific species used to make the insecticide. There are a number of things that are affecting honeybee populations, and there are flowers that are poisonous to them. I know that the California buckeye, for one, kills larval bees when honey from its nectar is fed to them, but it doesn't affect the adults collecting the nectar. The bees don't know this because they are European natives and have not lived around CA buckeye long enough to figure out the connection yet. Feverfew could have a similar action, I don't know, but it does come from the same part of the world that honeybees come from so you'd think they'd be adapted to it ... Insecticide use is very bad for bees - not just yours, but all your neighbors too. There are various epidemics among bee hives too, varroa mite for one, and a virus from Australia for another. Plus, there are fewer and fewer bee keepers as people migrate indoors more and more and spend less time gardening and farming. Around here, honeybees need beekeepers as the climate is not conducive to wild honeybee colonies surviving for long. Plus fear of bee stings and bee allergies drives people to kill bee colonies for one, and to avoid planting flowers that bees like for another. Bees love clover, but so many people use weed killers on their lawns specifically to kill off the clover so there wont' be any bees on the lawn. What's a poor bee supposed to do?? Bees love the daisy flowers, and I've never noticed a connection between daisy flowers and bee mortality. I used to be married to someone from a family of beekeepers and I would have heard about it if daisies were a problem for bees.

Perhaps this link should help you out a bit. I'm focusing more on trees & shrubs that are staggered a bit throughout the year on flowering. This will also insure food for our native bees what are in decline lately, these shrubs and trees will be around for a long time, even after your'e past on. Konrad Here is a link that might be useful: Best Flowers for Bees

Kimmsr, the pumpkin plant is inside fenced area. Unfortunately my first ever pumpkin dropped off this morning. However, there are a few female flowers coming up.:) I hope by them I can have more male flowers bloom. Do I just plug the male flower and brush with the female when do hand pollination and early in the morning? (I don't see much bees and other insects around). There was another unopened male flower bud been cut off when I checked this morning :( and there was one blooming:)