Dec. 9 , 2008
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| Yao Hua Law (left) and Randy Veirs display the winning t-shirt. (Photos by Kathy Keatley Garvey) |
DAVIS—"To bee or not to bee."
That is the question. What is the solution?
The plight of the honey bees has not escaped the UC Davis Entomology Graduate Students' Association (EGSA).
This year's winning EGSA t-shirt, the result of a departmental faculty-student-staff-vote, stars the "unsung heroes": the honey bees.
Randall "Randy" Veirs, executive assistant for department chair Lynn Kimsey, and communications specialist Kathy Keatley Garvey, came up with the winning shirt. Veirs created the intricate drawing and Garvey, the text, a take-off of a line from Shakespeare's Hamlet, "to be or not to be."
Veirs, who describes himself as more of a musician than an artist, drew a framed portrait of a Shakespearean bee in period clothing, complete with an Elizabethan collar.
Veirs, who plays principal trumpet in the UC Davis Symphony and is a UC Davis music major graduate, said he spent several days drawing the bee, gathering information online about proper Shakespearean attire. His brother, Russell Veirs, also a musician (bachelor's degree in music from UC Davis and master's degree in saxophone performance from California State University, Sacramento), helped him prepare the image in Photoshop.
The t-shirt ties in with Shakespeare's view that "All the world's a stage." It also ties in with Shakespeare's fascination for bees. One of the playwright's lines from Henry V: "For so work the honey bees, creatures that by a rule in nature teach the act of order to a peopled kingdom."
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| This is Randy Veirs' winning design. The shirt comes in light blue or beige. Click to enlarge. |
The bee t-shirt is not only raising funds for EGSA but raising awareness for the honey bees, said department chair Lynn Kimsey. Beekeepers throughout the country report they are losing from one-third to 100 percent of their bees due to colony collapse disorder, a mysterious phenomenon in which bees abandon their hives.
The t-shirts are $15 and available in child-through-adult sizes, said t-shirt project coordinator Yao Hua Law, a doctoral student who studies with professor Jay Rosenheim. "The funds will be used for EGSA activities, including the monetary prizes for the EGSA-organized Undergraduate Entomology Research Poster Competition," he said.
Plans are also under way to sell the T-shirts through the University Bookstore, thus making "online payments possible and shipping fluid," Law said.
Other UC Davis entomology t-shirts are also available. One of the favorites is "The Beetles." A parody of The Beatles' "Abbey Road" album cover, the t-shirt features four beetles crossing Abbey Road. Doctoral candidate Hillary Thomas, who studies with major professor Frank Zalom, an integrated pest management specialist, designed the beetles' shirt.
Law is taking orders for the EGSA t-shirts at (530) 752-4481 or by email, ylaw@ucdavis.edu.
