When I was a kid, summer meant stepping on a bee and getting stung -- it was like a rite of passage. Mum would just take out the stinger and mix up a baking soda and water poultice and spread it on the sting. With an admonishment, "Put some shoes on!" my sister and I would be off into the yard again, barefoot, catching bees in a jar, examining them carefully then letting them go. I find nature amazing, wonderful and sometimes strange. Maybe that's why I became a biologist.

My how times have changed for kids. Now it seems it's a major catastrophe if a child so much as sees an insect. I believe we all need to "grow up," and understand if it weren't for insects, we would not have pollination. And no pollination, then no fruits, vegetables, flowers, trees. Where would our food security be without bees? Without bees in particular, the world would be green but would lack most other colours. Honeybees pollinate flowers and they also make delicious, antibiotic, never-spoiling honey.

I've become more "bee-aware" lately. In June, I took a bee workshop and learned a lot. I knew honeybee populations worldwide are being wiped out so we should cherish the honeybees we have. But I didn't know we have many species of native bees that pollinate plants. Some native bees look like little flies so don't go zapping them! Native bees don't live in hives or produce honey but they are powerful pollinators. They are called "doorstop foragers" because they don't travel as far as honeybees. To survive and continue pollinating (if honeybees disappear) they need many groves of trees and large patches of flowers interspersed within farmland and the cityscape.

My friend Brian Campbell of "Blessed Bee" is truly Richmond's King of Bees. The goal of Blessed Bee is to build community and knowledge around bee conservation and bees in the city. Recently a friend and I went with Campbell to experience the honeybees that he nurtures. Campbell taught us more about these gentle creatures than I could have imagined. He also dispelled many bee. Honeybees navigate by blue sky, so when it's sunny they leave the hive and forage for pollen (protein) and nectar (energy). On cloudy days they stay in the hive and "bug" each other.

The worker bees are all females and as they age they progress from nurse bees (taking care of the larvae and pupae), to guard bees (watching for intruders and releasing homing pheromones) to foraging bees (flying far away for food). The male drones hang around in the hive and fertilize the queen's eggs.

The workers feed the drones, the queen and the kids and keep the hive clean.

Wow, people are more like bees than I thought! The queen doesn't sit around and eat royal jelly all day as I'd seen in cartoons.

She roams about, checking the nursery and food supplies and laying eggs. She lives about five years; then, in the fall, the workers feed royal jelly to a few worker larvae and kick out the old queen and the drones into the cold. Strange but true!

You can hear Brian at a special Free Family Event at the Richmond Cultural Centre (7700 Minoru Gate) on Saturday Aug. 28th from 1 to 4 p.m, called Grow Up!

It is co-hosted by the Richmond Art Gallery, the Richmond Food Security Society and the Richmond Women's Resource Centre and will run concurrently with the RAG's amazing exhibition "Strange Nature" which makes you think about the delicate balance between human and natural worlds.

At 2 p.m., artist Robin Ripley will give a talk about her art installation Threnody.

Richmond's King of Bees will be doing a beehive demonstration and he will also lead a youth workshop on making "bee bombs," egg-sized seed and clay "bombs" that the youth can toss into empty lots so they will bloom for the bees next year. Three bands: Dr. Dad's Sound Lab, Magneticring and Benjacques will provide strange, spacey, ambient music to accompany the youth workshop.

Other fun activities include a zucchini-decorating workshop for children, a plant exchange for adults, sales tables of summer harvest and winter plants, as well as information tables by community groups.

I would encourage everyone reading this to come and bring your families (and a plant to exchange) to this Strange Nature event. Hopefully, we will all "grow up" and realize how interconnected we are with nature, and nature with us.