Is there a native honey bee

[Jon]

I am not quoting from the presentations at the AGM.
Grace McCormack's work is at Galway, NUIG, not LIT and involves a different project to do with varroa tolerance. Her PhD student is Keith Browne.
I have regular correspondence with Jack about the progress of his work.
The native bee of Ireland is Apis mellifera mellifera. That is not in dispute by anyone.
Amm had a historic range from the west of Europe through to the Urals but the distribution has become fragmented now.
Any bee subspecies whether Amm, Carnica or Ligustica carries a wide range of genetic variation within its population.
The issue is whether the population has become seriously hybridised with other subspecies or Buckfast and it appears that it has not been, based on the initial work carried out.
Amm Queens have been swapped all around the British Isles by Bibba members for decades. Historically some Amm was brought into the British Isles from France and Holland. That will have left a genetic trace I imagine but does it matter? Not to me.
I would not expect Scottish Amm to be hugely different from Irish Amm but I dare say there a a few markers which would show a difference. This is of no practical significance though as the main issue would be hybridisation with different subspecies as opposed to some crossing between ecotypes of the same subspecies.

The Germans have tried to replace their native Amm population with Carnica over a number of decades. I think this started in the 1930s.
According to Robin Moritz the German 'Carnica' population still contains some Amm genetics