The hope of recovering  or finding the native bee in the UK/Ireland
that existed years ago is surely unreal.  I give you these reasons:
 
The native bee as was, was almost if not entirely wiped out by
accarine, any survivors will have by now crossed with Apis m.m.
European bees which were  imported from Holland, France...etc.  by the
hundreds.  There will even be crosses with other races e.g. Italian,
carnolian and Caucasian.
 
By selecting what exists at present by the methods of wing vien
morphometry is simply selecting for an ecotype - not the original
native bee but is the closest you will get.
 
Here is an example of how morphometry could lead you astray.....:
Kangaroo island is known as the sanctuary for the ligustica honeybee,
no other races exist and morphologically every bee is Apis m.l.   DNA
sequence analysis of the ATPase 6, COIII, cytochrome b and ND2
mitochondrial genes shows significant association, between the
Kangaroo Island haplotype and A m mellifera and provides evidence that
the Kangaroo Island population was originally established from hybrids
(KOULIANOS_S, CROZIER_RH .  APIDOLOGIE, 1996, Vol.27, No.3,
pp.165-174)
 
i.e.  like the dark bees being selected for in the UK they are  an
ecotype
 
Also,
What you are doing is using an essentially closed system and you can
only select what exists within that system.  Whereas, Bro Adam took it
a step further,  he selected accarine resistant bees and knew that
improvement could only be made by using an open system therefore he
could select, via his criteria , and introduce improvements by adding
genetic material to his bee.  We all know  the results he obtained and
how beekeeping has benifited.
 
The museum specimen that Angus mentioned is most likely to be the only
example of the real native bee  A.m.m.    Scientifically this is a
valuable specimen and should be examined later when more  gene mapping
studies have been carried out .
 
 
I'm sure the  black vs yellow argument will continue :-)
 
Regards
Philip