The dairy cream and custard filling would have required cool storage, inaccessible to most households in earlier centuries.

One source for the origin of bienenstich cites a legend of German bakers from the 15th century who lobbed beehives at raiders from a neighboring village, successfully repelling them, and celebrated later by baking a version of this cake named after their efforts.

On the morning in question, however, two baker's apprentices from Andernach walked along the city wall and ate from the bee nests hanging there.

[5] In 1913, а cookbook by the Baden Women's Association, the word bee sting still primarily refers to the roasted mass.

[8] In the newly edited version of the German Dictionary, the word bee sting, meaning cake, is referenced to a passage from Alfred Döblin's 1929 novel Berlin Alexanderplatz.