often applied to this subspecie is A.m.iberica, an epithet originally proposed by Skorikov in his 1929 monograph on honey bees. Authors subsequent to Skorikov assumed in error that the iberica referred to the Iberian Peninsula and thereby quickly adopted the name for the subspecie of bees living in Spain and bordering areas. However, the name iberica was based on a Caucasian subspecie of honey bees, the epithet referring to the Greco-Roman designation for the Georgian Kingdom established in that region in antiquity. The true A. m. iberica of Skorikov has nothing to do with the western Mediterranean subspecie of bees, and under the rules of nomenclature the name iberica is not valid for this lineage of honey bees. The corrected and valid name for the subspecie is Apis mellifera iberiensis. In a comparative study of A.m.iberiensis and five others sub-species of Apis mellifera including A.m.intermissa, A. m. monticola, A. m. scutellata, A. m. adansonii and A. m. capensis cleavage maps obtained through the use of restriction enzyme showed the Spanish Honey bee contains mtDNA similar to intermissa and also mellifera. Additionally A.m.intermissa belongs to a group shown by experiment to have similar mtD.N.A (mitochondrian D.N.A.), this including monticola, scuttelata, adansonii and capensis. In Spanish bee populations, mtDNA haplotypes of African bee strains were found to be frequently present. Migrating bee populations formed the original colonies of bee in western Europe, landing to eventually populate the continent from Africa across the Straits of Gibraltar. Genoma The Iberian Peninsula is an area of hybridization between the north of Africa and Europe, the influence of Apis mellifera mellifera is present in bees localized in the northern, and the influence of Apis mellifera intermissa is more present in the south, in the Apis mellifera iberiensis. A. m. iberiensis DNA is present in the honey bees of the western United States where the honey bees are not native and they were introduced from Spain during the conquest of America. Presents six haplotypes different, five of them correspond to an evolutionary lineage from Africa and one from West Europa. From this, infer the hybrid nature of this subspecies, which has a predominant influence in the south of the Iberian Peninsula, with a North African component that is gradually replaced towards the north, with Apis mellifera mellifera. The genetic variability of the microsatellite of the chromosomes, is similar to that of African populations in the number of