Bee’s Knees cocktail is a member of the Martini family. However, for years we thought was created in Prohibition-Era circumstances. Prohibition was a nationwide constitutional ban on the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages from  17 January 1920 to 5 December 1933.

Following an article on 22 April 1929 edition of Standard Union from Brooklyn, New York, reports a then-latest trend in Paris at Women’s-Only Bar where this cocktails origins for the American millionaires partying in Paris.

The drinks writer Jared Brown uncover the article saying that the Bee’s Knees cocktail was an invention by Margaret Brown also known as “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” – an American socialite and philanthropist who unsuccessfully encouraged the crew in Lifeboat No6 to return to the debris field of the 1912 sinking of Titanic to look for survivors.

A second version appears in David A. Embury’s 1948 The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks where he adds a touch of orange juice.