Green’s Dictionary of Slang

bees (and honey) n.

money.

1892		Answers 10 Sept. 276: One kind of back-slang consists of creating a sentence, the last word of which will rhyme with the word [...] ‘Bees and honey’ for ‘money’.
1908		‘Doss Chiderdoss’ ‘Significant Strains’ Sporting Times 9 May 1/3: The only likely spot where a little bees and honey might be found, / Was the automatic ‘tinkler,’ worked by pennies in the slot.
1908		‘Doss Chiderdoss’ ‘Penny Numbers’ Sporting Times 11 July 1/3: I shouted, ‘Your “bees,” or your “trouble and strife!”’.
1912		Sport (Adelaide) 8 June 14/2: They Say [...] That N. and E. D. didn't walk home [...] they had sufficient bees and honey to ride.
1919		T.A. Dorgan in Zwilling TAD Lex. (1993) 17: How about the bees and honey brother — Could you slip me a little change?
1928		M.C. Sharpe Chicago May: Her Story in Hamilton (1952) 132: Bees and honey – money.
1932		‘P.P.’ Rhy. Sl. 9: The ‘gooseberry’s’ gone to the ‘5 to 2’ for some ‘bees and honey’ ’cos the ‘Gawd forbids’ ain’t got no ‘Tommy Tucker’.
1937		L. Lane Me and My Girl I i: The money – then I’ll mizzle bees and honey.
1944		D. Runyon Runyon à la Carte 91: The playwright, whose play is now running along quite successfully and making plenty of beesum.
1946		St. Vincent Troubridge ‘Some Notes on Rhyming Argot’ in AS XXI:1 46: bees and honey. Money. (Origin uncertain, probably English. Pot o’ honey in Cockney slang.) Almost certainly English origin, and current to this day. I have heard bees and honey ten times for every use of pot o’ honey.
1957		G. Kersh Fowlers End (2001) 236: ‘Did you get the bees-and-honey?’ ‘The money? Yes, I got it.’.
1963		L.F. Freed Crime in S. Afr. 83: A client with a lot of money is said to have ‘a lot of bees and honey’.
1963		A.S. Fleischman Venetian Blonde (2006) 154: I thought about [...] all the bees and honey she had talked about.
1979		R. Barker Fletcher’s Book of Rhy. Sl. 25: Being very short of bees and honey.
1989		(con. 1950s–60s) in G. Tremlett Little Legs 12: He knew how to make the bees and the honey.
1999		R. Walton ‘Cockney Jack’ 🌐 Jack turned toward the cries, just in time to see a babbling brook dash out of a bakery carrying a bag of bees and honey.
2001		M. Coles Bible in Cockney 81: Don’t take any Uncle Fred [...] and no bees in your pocket.
2003		Guardian Weekend 22 Feb. 7: My Hammersmith window-cleaner who would insist on ‘bees and honey’ (money) rather than a ‘Gregory Peck’ (cheque).