I may as well continue dealing with some difficulties that I mentioned in this thread. As I noted, Melissa or Melitta [= bee, honey bee] is Apis in Latin. To add: The Cretan "Bee" was Spex, which, like the two aforementioned Greek names, is not a cognate of Apis. So, I have an unresolved problem: Where does Apis come from? (In innumerable other cases, the Latin words derive From Greek, as the Roman Varro and others have practically proven.)
I just came across an online article by a long-time glottologist, Pittau, a Sardinian Italian who has specialized in the study of the Etruscan language. The long article is a vocabulary of Italian words of uncertain etymology, which he traces back to what he calls Etrusco-Latin words [Etruscan words in Latin garb, attested in Latin literature]. As we always knew, It. Ape (= Bee) is from Lat. Apem (the accusative case of Apis), but now he contends that Apis has to be interpreted in view of the Etr.-Latin word APIANA [api-ana], which supposedly denotes a camomille plant that is dear to bees. [I would translate this word as the bee land or homeland.] Anyway, now my problem has been transposed: Where does the Etruscan Api- come from? I have already deciphered many Etruscan inscriptions and a proclamation by the Classical Greek language, but I do not find a Gr. cognate of it. In diverse Gr. lexicons, Apis is the name of an Egyptian God, the name of a mythical king of Argos, and the old and obsolete name of the Peloponnesos, but these names do not reveal their meanings; however, I found that the Peloponnese, or its southern part, has a long and creative history of BEE-KEEPING (apiculture). Probably that land was called Bee-land, *Apia or something like that, and Apiana in Latin or Etrusco-Latin. [The Gr. adjective Apios/Apia is attested.]
Correction: The Liddell-Scott Greek-English Dictionary points out that Apia or "Apia GE" was the old name of the Peloponnese or of Argolis, and that Apios/Apia = "Apian, Peloponnesian", but they do not give the meaning of these words.