Bee's Knees Recipe

About the Bee's Knees

The Bee’s Knees cocktail is a Prohibition-era classic made up of gin, honey, and lemon juice. The drink carries a few different origin stories, but many reports peg its invention to Frank Meier, a bartender at the Hôtel Ritz in Paris in the 1920s. Meier was known for his innovative cocktails, and the Bee's Knees was one of his most popular creations. The drink quickly became a favorite among Ritz clientele, as well as celebrities and socialites, and it was soon featured in many popular cocktail books. That helped to spread the Bee's Knees to bars and households across the world.The Bee's Knees is a simple cocktail to make, but it is important to use high-quality ingredients. The gin should be dry and crisp (Beefeater and Tanqueray are solid choices), the lemon juice should be fresh, and the honey syrup should ideally be homemade by mixing equal parts honey and water. This gives it a thinner consistency that's better for mixing. The three-ingredient recipe is greater than the sum of its parts. The gin is dry, herbal, and bracing, while the lemon juice adds brightness and acidity, and the honey syrup provides sweetness and complexity.Back when the Bee's Knees was created, ingredients like honey, citrus, and other sweeteners or fruits were often mixed with the era's harsh spirits to soften them up, mask the bad flavors, and make the drinks more palatable. In the case of the Bee's Knees cocktail, the strong flavor of the lemon with the sweetness of the honey helped turn the notorious bathtub gin of the time into a tasty and popular tipple.There are many variations of the Bee's Knees cocktail recipe. Some popular versions are simple tweaks that use a different type of gin like Hendrick's, with its notes of cucumber and rose, or they skip gin entirely and opt for vodka. Others top the drink with sparkling wine or club soda. But others get more adventurous, muddling fruit into the mixture, or employing a bitter or spiced liqueur to ramp up the nuance and taste.What's with the name Bee's Knees?Fair question. The phrase "bee's knees" was popular slang during the Roaring Twenties, a decade of opulence, decadence, and—despite Prohibition—lots of good craft cocktails. The saying was used to describe something that was excellent or "the best." So it's likely that Meier dubbed the drink the Bee's Knees upon tasting it, knowing that he'd hit on a winner. It's also just good marketing.