put the bee on

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium. Particularly: “Is it from the initial B of "beat" and "borrow"?”)

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put the bee on (third-person singular simple present puts the bee on, present participle putting the bee on, simple past and past participle put the bee on)

1. (slang, transitive, chiefly US) To finish off; to beat.
   • 2001, Travis Beal Jacobs, Eisenhower at Columbia, Transaction, page 152:

     When Carmen quipped in, “Well, Mr. President somebody has to put the bee on them,” the General asserted, “It won't be me, never.”

2. (slang, transitive, chiefly US) To beg from; to borrow money from.
   • 1938, Clifford Robe Shaw, Henry Donald McKay, “et al.”, in Brothers in Crime, University of Chicago, page 157:

     Sometimes I'd see a woman in the backyard, and, if she had a kind face I'd put the bee on her.

   • 1945, John Steinbeck, Cannery Row:

     I don’t want to be the kind of a guy that would take advantage of him. You know one time I put the bee on him for a buck.