Yep! Thank you, I'm a beekeeper, and since I'm registered with the state, they send me a letter every year telling me I'm on a list where they'll not spray 100 yards before and behind the location of my hives. That's right in the middle of the garden.
The problem here, I find, is the people around me are producing pests on a level I've never had the experience. The Small Hive Beetle, or SHB (Aethina tumida), is a pest of Honeybees, introduced in the middle 90's. When I was on the farm, I would open a hive and see maybe 20 or more beetles running for cover. Now here in the city, I open a hive and find 100 or more.
I planted Stowell's evergreen sweet corn 3 times one summer, the army worms ate it down to the ground. Dipel, Thuracide, and Deadbug just slowed them down. I watched the wasps hunting them until they were glutted.
I came out to find my next door neighbor's son or something with a machine on his back. He was spraying stuff all over the yard, standing 10 FEET FROM MY HIVE WITH BEES FLYING IN AND OUT! I shouted until he turned the thing off, and said, "Don't spray in this direction! I have bees here." He looked, and said, "I didn't even know they were there!"
Since the main pollinator for the gourds would be Sphinx moths, the ones that look like hummingbirds, they would be flying all over the area. I can't imagine what may have happened for my gourds, either I planted out of the time frame for their feeding on my flowers, or there was simply no population to pollinate them.
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