Hamlet’s famous question brought to mind the wordplay possible between “be” and “bee.” To create a base, I cut out a large B, painted it red, and turned it sideways to stand on its serifs. This created a bottom space to hold the phrase “To Bee or Not to Be.” The humps of the B gave me two areas to hold images, suggesting a beginning and an end. So, we have the hive and bees from the birds and bees, and the tombstone for those no longer being. Online, I found photos of a straw bee skep, several tombstones from which I built one, and images of bees and putti. I reworked and colorized them in Photoshop. I wrote the tombstone text as a play on Hamlet’s soliloquy, making it about a beekeeper who died of bee stings. By the luck of shadows, the tombstone face looks anxiously down at the emerging queen bee.