The four disks have been laser cut from a single "P1"-sized sheet of 0.8mm black polypropylene, with a total manufacturing cost of $8.70, plus shipping. I left out the bee's legs and antennae from the disk designs, because I was unsure if they'd survive the laser cutting process.

I set the lens's aperture to wide open (f/3.5), then added one of the disks at the front end of the lens. Because this bee-shaped aperture is more restrictive than the one inside the lens, it becomes the new aperture stop for the entire lens system. Out-of-focus points of light in the photo will take on the shape of this aperture stop.

Just like closing down the len's aperture, the image is darkened by adding this aperture disk in front, and depth of field is increased due to the restricted aperture. I found that the second-smallest bee was about the right size, the larger bees had the tips of their wings clipped off in the photos, and the smallest bee was a more restrictive aperture than I needed.

If I focus in front of the figure, you can see how the bee-shaped aperture affects all of the out-of-focus areas, with a bee even appearing at the tip of her hair!