A Giant Honey Bee from the Middle Miocene of Japan (Hymenoptera: Apidae) Author ENGEL, MICHAEL S. text American Museum Novitates 2006 2006-01-12 3504 1 1 12 http://www.bioone.org/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1206%2F0003-0082(2006)504%5B0001%3AAGHBFT%5D2.0.CO%3B2 journal article 3675 10.1206/0003-0082(2006)504[0001:AGHBFT]2.0.CO;2 5a13b875-12b3-4def-a8e3-abcc8ea2c7d9 0003-0082 4735309 Apis cerana heimifeng Engel Apis cerana heimifeng Engel, 1999: 179 . Apis cerana abaensis Hepburn, Radloff, Smith, and Otis, 2001: 6 . Nomen nudum . COMMENTS: Peng et al. (1989) performed a preliminary morphometric study of variation in the Asian honey bee, A. cerana . From these studies they recognized several distinctive morphoclusters that they termed races and to which they gave vernacular names (for purposes of discussion). One race was identified with the vernacular name ‘‘Aba race’’ and later validated as A. cerana heimifeng . Peng et al. (1989) never employed their name ‘‘Aba’’ as a Latinized taxonomic entity. Recently, Hepburn et al. (2001) have unfortunately turned this vernacular name into a Latinized epithet by employing it as a subspecific name for which it was never intended, rather than use an already valid taxonomic name for this morphotype.