Three widely allopatric taxa are often considered as mere subspecies of Bombus cullumanus (Kirby): cullumanus s.s., apollineus Skorikov and serrisquama Morawitz.

Bombus cullumanus cullumanus has an Atlantic distribution, but is uncommon to very rare throughout its range. Formerly, it was found in the most southern part of Sweden, in Denmark and N.-W Germany, in the Netherlands, in Belgium, in England, in N. France and the Paris region and (with some doubt) in the French Alpes-Maritimes.
Nowadays, the last stations where the species has been observed are restricted to the Massif Central and the Pyrenees (including their Spanish side) (Rasmont, 1988). No one specimen have been observed since 2004.

The range of Bombus cullumanus apollineus is restricted to E. Anatolia, Transcaucasia and N. Iran. We had no access to specimens from the Caucasus and did not find any reference to this region.

The range of B. cullumanus serrisquama is very large but discontinuous. The western part of it includes the steppic plateaus of N. Spain; more east, the species is found in the steppic regions extending from Hungary (near Budapest) to the north of the Altai (near Biisk). A southern part of the range includes the steppic foothills of S. E. Kazakhstan, E. Uzbekistan, Tadzhikistan, Kirgiztan and Afghanistan. Tkalcu (1969a) considers Bombus praemarinus Panfilov, from the Vladivostok region, as a synonym of B. serrisquama; this would extend the range of the species to the Pacific coast.
The displayed map includes some dubious or ancient locations. The most northern one, in the Arkhangelsk region is imprecise. One finding on the Elburz (Reinig, 1939b) is regarded by Baker (1996) as unlikely. However, the recent discovery of B. serrisquama in N.-E. Turkey (Özbek, 1998) makes this observation much more likely. The first author found again serrisquama in this region in 2011.
Most data are ancient and the present status of the species is worrying.

P. Rasmont