"I'm warning you right now, these are addictive," the featured speaker said ominously.

More than 50 people had turned out to a South Surrey church on a snowy Saturday morning in late February to attend a special seminar addressing a super bug that has become all the rage across the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island.

Medical crisis? Uh, no. Strange side effects from drugs? Nope. Looming global pandemic? Uh uh. Gardening? Bingo -- more specifically, a super bug that pollinates at a prodigious rate, helping flowering plants thrive and stressing the limbs of fruit trees with bumper crops.

We're talking B.O.M.B.s here, folks -- blue orchard mason bees, a native species in British Columbia that has been embraced by homeowners as a natural solution to pollination problems.

After creating tension with the addiction comment, speaker Steve Dreve of Busy B Creations provided a punch line: "If you buy some, I tell people they should buy a chair at the same time because it's easy to get obsessed with them. Just pull up a chair with your morning coffee and watch them go to work."

Dreve's presentation was arranged by Cathy Steele, manager of Surrey's Wild Birds Unlimited store, in response to the increased interest her customers have shown in the little buzzing BOMBs. Steele knew people wanted to learn more about the subject, but mason bees have grown so popular she had to book Dreve months in advance.

"We've been carrying mason bees and mason bee houses for almost 20 years, but in the last five years the interest level in them has really increased," she said. "I never used to sell out of bees or houses, but I do now."

Jamie Vander Zalm at Art Knapps garden centre in Surrey echoed Steele's amazement at the popularity of the bugs.

"When we first got into them I thought, 'Who is going to buy bees? Who's going to get this, understand it?' But it seems to be something that's not too difficult for the average Joe to introduce into the backyard," Vander Zalm said. "That surprised me because I thought it might be too technical, but obviously that's not the case. We sell lots of them, although I do find it tends to be an earthier, nature-oriented kind of person who buys them."

So what are these little marvels? Put bluntly, they are a native species of bee that emerges each spring just in time to feed and collect pollen from early blooming flowers and fruit trees. Roughly the size of a thumbnail, mason bees -- Osmia lignaria propinqua to biologists -- have dark bodies with an iridescent blue hue that makes them look almost like freakishly large houseflies.

Mason bees live for just four to six weeks before dying, which means from the moment they emerge from their cocoons, their biological clocks are ticking -- literally. Males breed with the emerging females and then die, leaving the female to complete the task of propagation of the species. In this short window she will complete the job of collecting food, laying eggs and creating individual cells for her young to develop in.

Each mason bee works alone, bringing nectar and pollen back to the nest, which in nature is usually a long, narrow fissure with limited access from one end. Holes bored by beetles are preferred in the wild, but gardeners can lend them a hand with special custom nesting blocks. The female lays one egg on a pile of pollen and then collects mud to seal it off and begin work on gathering more food and mud supplies for the next cell. When the egg hatches, the larva feeds on the amassed pollen before spinning a cocoon where it develops into adulthood. It then remains dormant through the fall and winter months before it emerges in mid-March to complete the cycle again. The female's task-oriented focus on food gathering and egg laying lends itself to another trait humans find appealing -- mason bees won't sting unless it's the last resort.

"One of the reasons they're so popular is these guys are not apt to sting," said Margriet Dogterom, a Coquitlam-based mason bee expert who has written a book about the species. "They can sting but, because they're solitary and aren't protecting a hive, they're not aggressive. People describe them as the gentle bee. Stinging is the last thing they want to do because they are so focused on the job of collecting food and producing offspring. Even if you grab one, they'll actually vibrate like crazy and it's just an awful feeling."

Growing numbers of gardeners have caught on to the benefits of mason bees. Some people like the natural approach to pollination while others, mindful of problems that have afflicted commercial honeybee stocks, want to do their part to give Mother Nature a helping hand. The biggest benefit for gardeners, however, is the mason bees' role as a superb pollinator. Where the honeybee operates at less than 10 per cent efficiency in spreading pollen, mason bees check in at over 90 per cent, thanks to tiny hairs all over their abdomen and a propensity for plopping down in the middle of flowers. This makes nature's buzz BOMBs an attractive fit for most urban gardeners.

"Suburbia, with all the flowers and gardening around, provides a phenomenal amount of food for bees," Dogterom said. "Gardeners are probably going to be much more successful with mason bees than if you plunked them down in an open area where there's just grass. All the mason bees need is food -- early spring flowers and, of course, fruit trees. If you have continuous blooms throughout the spring, that will feed the bees and create lots of offspring for next year's pollination season."

Dogterom, who runs her own mason bee supply business (beediverse.com), said the bees start out as a natural solution to a problem, but often evolve into something more. Like a Zamboni circling an ice rink, people can't help but watch the bees at work. The next thing they know, they're following Dreve's advice with a folding chair and their morning coffee.

"They're a window into nature," Dogterom said. "You have a house set up for them so you know where the bees are if you want to see them. In wildlife photography or observations, you don't often know where the animals will be. So if you have a house for the nest, you know where they are and can watch them at work.

"Mason bees can be a great retirement hobby because it grabs guys' attention because they can build gadgets for them and then watch the bees at work."

She added with a laugh: "Retired guys have time on their hands and this is one way to stay out of their wives' hair."

Dogterom has been spreading the word about mason bees since 1999 and she admits it wasn't always easy to convince gardeners to give the BOMBs a try. The tide has slowly turned and, in the past five years, interest in these super pollinators has grown rapidly to the point where gardening supply stores have a hard time keeping up with demand.

"I think the interest is going to continue to grow," Dogterom said. "Eventually, almost every yard will have a mason bee house, just like every yard has a bird house now."