An educational meeting “Evening With Insects” open to the wide public was held at the Hydrobiological Station of the Nencki Institute PAS in Mikolajki on the afternoon of 5^th September 2017 as the opening part of the entomological workshop „World of insects around us” held on 5^th-11^th September 2017, and as a contribution to the celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the Nencki Institute. During that evening the participants attended two lectures.  Professor Ewa J. Godzińska from the Nencki Institute delivered a lecture entitled „One hundred years of the Nencki Institute: discovering the secrets of insect world” in which she presented selected research achievements of entomologists from the Nencki Instititute and numerous anecdotes telling about their life and adventures. A particular stress was laid on the achievements of two famous entomologists who had acted as the Directors of the Nencki Institute, Romuald Minkiewicz (the Director of the Institute during the period 1926-1931) and Jan Bohdan Dembowski (the Director of the Institute during the period 1947-1961), including the results of the research on behaviour and ecology of the caddisfly larvae (Molanna angustata) carried out at the Hydrobiological Station of the Nencki Institute in Mikołajki by Jan Bohdan Dembowski and his coworkers: Andrzej Grębecki, Leszek Kuźnicki, Włodzimierz Kinastowski and Rasza Szlep. She also discussed some ideas and discoveries of a couple of worldwide known myrmecologists, Janina Dobrzańska and Jan Wojciech Dobrzański, also the pupils of Jan Bohdan Dembowski. She then presented some achievements of Jerzy Andrzej Chmurzyński, the nestor of Polish ethologists, who studied mostly the behaviour of various flies and the sphecid wasp Bembix rostrata, and of his pupils Teresa Zabłocka and Maria Kieruzel. Lastly, she also recounted briefly some of the research of her own team on bumblebee and ant behaviour. The second lecture entitled „Insects among us!”, delivered by Dr Tomasz Włodarczyk from the University of Bialystok, presented the most important insect groups and species encountered in Poland, together with many informations about their biology. Two exhibitions of insect macrophotographs were also opened during that evening. Maciej Nielubowicz, M.Sc. (Warsaw) presented an exhibition entitled „Ant microcosm₃” consisting of macrophotographs of various Polish and foreign ants including obligatory social parasites of the genus Polyergus (the amazon ants) and their slaves. Many photographs showed ants in interesting situations and/or displaying unusual behaviour patterns such as group spread-eagling of another individual. The exhibition presented by Zbigniew Salwin, B.Eng. (Ostróda) entitled „In front of my lens” consisted of numerous macrophotographs of small inhabitants of woodlands and meadows encountered by the author during his field trips, mostly insects from various taxa. His photographs showed both adults and larvae, and one of them also showed a beautiful spider. Both expositions remained on display during the whole workshop.