Hi all
The discussion of capensis vs scutellata bees has taken me on a trip back thru the paperwork. This, by Hepburn & Radloff, is amusing while being instructive (I know, it is refuted by newer work):

> The inescapable conclusion is that although honeybees may be “frog-marched” into subspecific categories with formal trinomial scientific names, these categories are of necessity artefactual and seriously obfuscate the biological ranges of naturally occurring characters. 

> Such categories cannot be natural kinds because they have no unique properties. Alternatively, the honeybees of southern Africa can be further subdivided and refined into some 40-odd “groups” but this would merely further cloud what is after all a genetically continuous population. 

> At present, the only way the term or name “A. m. capensis” (or A. m. scutellata for that matter) can be accurately meaningful is to precisely qualify a bee’s geographical point of origin.

Apis mellifera capensis: an essay on the subspecific classification of honeybees. Apidologie 33 (2002) 105–127

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