A recent paper lists "Thirty-three distinct honey bee subspecies" -- they are referring to Apis mellifera subspecies, having forgotten the others are honey bees, too. But back to the 33 -- some of these are of very dubious distinction, seemingly defined by what country they are found in. Who believes this stuff?

Apis mellifera carpathica Foti 1965 The Carpathian honey bee
Apis mellifera rodopica Petrov 1991 The Bulgarian honey bee
Apis mellifera cecropia Kiesenweiter 1860 The Greek honey bee
Apis mellifera siciliana Grassi 1881 The Sicilian honey bee
Apis mellifera adami Ruttner, 1975 The Cretan honey bee
Apis mellifera cypria Pollman 1879 The Cyprus honey bee
Apis mellifera artemisia Engel 1999 The Russian steppe honey bee

What's funny is they lump a whole bunch of countries together with this one, all the way from Uganda to Saudi Arabia, and yet Bulgaria has a native bee unique to that country?

Apis mellifera jemenitica Ruttner 1976 The Arabian honey bee: Arabian Peninsula, Chad, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, Yemen

"source"
R.A. Ilyasov, M-l. Lee, J-i. Takahashi, H. Wook Kwon, A.G. Nikolenko, A revision of subspecies structure of western honey bee Apis mellifera, Saudi Journal of Biological Sciences (2020)

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