[2] This subspecies is well characterized towards the south and west of a line passing from Zaragoza to Barcelona in the Iberian Peninsula,[3] belonging to the A lineage of Apis mellifera originating from Africa (formally mis-identified as belonging to the M Lineage originating from central Asia), colonizing Iberia across the Strait of Gibraltar.

in base to the description of Adam, but like several authors prior to him (e.g., Goetze, 1964) erroneously equated this bee with the subspecies proposed by Skorikov (1929) as Apis mellifera iberica (Skorikov, however, proposed the name for a subspecies occurring in the Caucasus and based the name on the ancient Greco-Roman designation for the Georgian Kingdom, Caucasian Iberians, existing there in antiquity).

Thus, the name as employed by Ruttner was an error, leaving Apis mellifera iberiensis as the only valid name for this subspecies of honey bees.

The name often applied to this subspecies 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 subspecies of bees living in Spain and bordering areas.

However, the name iberica was based on a Caucasian subspecies of honey bees, the epithet referring to the Greco-Roman designation for the Georgian Kingdom established in that region in antiquity.

In a comparative study of A. m. iberiensis and five others subspecies of Apis mellifera including A. m. intermissa, A. m. monticola, A. m. scutellata, A. m. adansonii and A. m. capensis,[7][8] cleavage maps obtained through the use of restriction enzymes[9] showed the Spanish Honey bee contains mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) similar to that in the subspecies intermissa and mellifera.

[10] Additionally, A. m. intermissa belongs to a group including the subspecies monticola, scuttelata, adansonii and capensis, with which it shares sequence similarities in the mtDNA.