Cranach painted the first version of Cupid Complaining to Venus in 1527; in subsequent years, he and his workshop produced at least twenty-five versions of the theme, a fine example of which is now in the National Gallery.
A Dürer watercolour of 1514, to which Cranach’s paintings are unrelated, is the earliest known visual interpretation of the theme in the Northern European artistic context. The subject ultimately derives from pseudo-Theocritean Idyll XIX, (the Honey Thief), which tells the story of Cupid’s complaint to his mother after being stung by a bee as he was stealing a honeycomb.
From: http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1477-4658.2007.00337.x?cookieSet=1
Bee Lore 
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