If you use nginx as apache reverse proxy. It downgrades requests to HTTP/1.0 and you lose the original HTTP version so just use:
Code: 
# Mitigate the spammers
<IfModule rewrite_module>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Accept-Language} ^$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} ^(POST)
RewriteRule .* - [R=406]
</IfModule>