At the colony level, genetic diversity is essential to colony health (Tarpy, 2003; Seeley and Tarpy, 2007) and fitness (Page, 1980; Mattila and Seeley, 2007; Oldroyd and Fewell, 2007). Admixture may lead to increased genetic diversity, yet it may also compromise local adaptations by disrupting co-evolved gene complexes fine-tuned by natural selection over evolutionary time (De la Rúa et al ., 2013). Accordingly, native honey bee subspecies represent reservoirs of unique combinations of genes and adaptations to local conditions that must be preserved and passed on to future generations of beekeepers.
http://www.ibra.org.uk/articles/Dive...-A-m-mellifera

Andrew Abrahams provided some of the bees for this Europe wide study and his were the purest Amm which is good to know.
Irish bees were not part of the study but I would hazard a guess that the Galtee stock is very pure.

There are about 10 open access papers in this IBRA special edition.

http://www.ibra.org.uk/articles/JAR-53-2-2014

Great to see some peer reviewed science on the native bees of Europe as opposed to the Beowulf Cooper folklore.

Norman Carreck gives an overview of this special edition of JAR in the current edition of Bee World.