The Bee's Knees is a gin sour with one defining swap: honey in place of sugar. It is a simple drink — gin, lemon, honey syrup, shaken cold and served up — but the honey gives it a rounded, floral sweetness no sugar syrup can match. Born in the Prohibition years, it takes its name from 1920s slang, in which the bee's knees meant the very best of something.
Honey does for a gin sour what plain sugar cannot: it rounds the drink off rather than simply sweetening it.
A Drink From the Dry Years
The Bee's Knees belongs to American Prohibition (1920-1933), the era of bathtub gin and improvised bars. The popular story holds that honey and lemon were enlisted to mask the harsh taste — and the smell — of badly made gin. It is a good story, and a plausible one, but impossible to prove; honey-sweetened sours were hardly an invention of the 1920s. What is certain is that the drink was in circulation by the decade's end.
It is frequently credited to Frank Meier, the bartender at the Ritz Paris, whose 1936 book The Artistry of Mixing Drinks includes a version. The attribution is not firm — like most drinks of the period, the Bee's Knees has no single documented author — but the Ritz connection has stuck.
The Spec
This is a sour, and it follows the sour's logic: a base spirit, something tart, something sweet. The only quirk is that the sweetener is honey, and honey will not behave in a cold shaker unless it has first been loosened into a syrup.
Honey Syrup, Not Honey
Straight honey seizes into a stubborn lump the moment it meets ice. Dilute it first: stir three parts honey into one part warm water until it is fully dissolved, then let it cool. This rich honey syrup pours, measures, and shakes like any other sweetener — and keeps for a couple of weeks refrigerated.
A Floral Gin Earns Its Keep
Honey and a soft, floral gin flatter each other; a fiercely juniper-led London Dry can fight the honey instead. This is a sound place for a gentler contemporary gin, though a classic London Dry still works — just expect a drier, more bracing result.
Bottom Line
The Bee's Knees is a drink with nothing to hide behind: three ingredients, no garnish to speak of, no technique beyond a hard shake. Get the honey syrup right and the balance right, and it earns its 1920s name.