Pollinators - Bees?

[SundayAfternoon]

My cucumbers are suffering. They began looking really strong and healthy, strong stems, abundant leaves and three cucumbers. My first crop!

But now, a couple of weeks old, the cukes are looking small twisted and deformed.

I'm googling about growing them, and have found that 'bees' are essential for pollinating cucumbers, and without them, cucumbers don't polinate properly - which can lead to the kinds of deformities as I'm seeing.

Thing is... here in thailand, I've hardly ever seen a bee!

Does Thailand have bees in abundance?

And if not, what would be doing the job of the polinating in their place?

Should I be attempting to polinate them myself with a painbrush?

Thanks.

[loong]

Cucumbers can suffer from stem rot. This means that they can start to produce and then soon look sickly.

They like a rich soil with plenty of organic matter. Like pumpkin, another crop that seems to grow well planted at the edge of the compost heap where lots of goodness leaches into the soil.

Sorry, but no idea about pollination, but we have plenty of bees here.

[canuckamuck]

Yeah there is lots of bees, some really cool ones and some really tiny ones too. But the ones near my bedroom window are the size of hummingbirds. I think they are very large all black bumblebees (not scientific, I know). One really cool bee I saw this week had no color at all. He looked like a regular honey bee that had been photographed in black and white and photo shopped into a color scene. We also have some metallic green bees here.

You can pollinate cukes by hand if you want, just get a male flower pull back the petals and wiggle it around in the private parts of a girl flower. Then leave a fake phone number and never call.

[soidog2]

A couple of weeks ago we had some big storms; this guys came to shelter but never left.

Looks like increased pollination for my garden !

[SundayAfternoon]

WOW, that's a great pic soidog2. Not that I'd want to go near it! LOL

Will try the polination method canuck. Thanks.