Dear Joe,
 
I assume you are in Ireland as you talk about the Irish beekeeper list. 
 
Several points you make me think about...
 
1) Can you determinate what "ferals" you have? If you are in an isolated part of Ireland you might have pure locally adapted mellifera mellifera. If that is so you have a jewel of biodiversity and introducing strange bees/genes will make you loose it. Not only you but all the beekeepers in your location will be affected. Pure races/ecotypes are rare these days in western Europe. They are worth much more (also from the money perspective) if you conserve them. We (Netherlands) have a small population of quite pure mellifera mellifera on an island, the rest of the country has been flooded with carnolian and buckfast type bees. People bring in bees without thinking of biosecurity (pathogens), everybody wants to play brother Adam and spread their best supercalm bee, including fresh varroa and strains of nosema and virusses.  Continuous mixing of non-adapted hosts and pathogens does not move us forward I think. 
 
2) If you have pure mellifera mellifera than you can select for the traits you want. You just continue what beekeepers have done for centuries, breed from the best available. mellifera mellifera will give good crops when flora and weather work along. 
 
3) mellifera mellifera is being picked upon by a lot of people. They say it is aggressive and does not yield much honey. Most of the people saying these things do not have experience with the bee. I have seen a lot of this bee as I did a lot of sampling for pathogens on the island, I have a couple of pure colonies next to pure carnolians and crosses. Our mellifera mellifera is very runny, they run and move on the combs and when the weather is bad they are more fierce than the carnolians but with good weather one can work them without gloves. They are not different in the swarming tendency, when they have enough space they swarming tendency is low. The bees are much in tune with the late blooms on the island and can give a bumper crop if the weather is good. Their strong point is that they shut down brood rearing quickly when resources are bad, they do not grow into 5 story colonies but they survive well under adverse conditions (windy relatively cold island). Other point of difference with my carnolian bees is that they make a lot of queen cells/emercency cells without being really swarmy, I think that is to spread the risk of queen loss under the reallly windy conditions. And it is a truly beautiful bee to look at, shiny black brown. 
 
4) Of the types of bees I have the mellifera mellifera queens that are fertilised by the carnolian/buckfast mix drones in the air are the most fierce. Much more than pure fertilised mellifera mellifera. 
 
5) Allthough the population has been isolated since say 1985, varroa and nosema ceranae are there. But the winter losses are always low compared to the rest of the country. It might be the island, it might be the bee. Isolation has something to do with it for sure. Currently we are investigating a difference in reproductive success of varroa in this bee compared the the mainland mixed bees. 
 
5) There is a market for native black bees I think. As there is for native island sheep and fowl. If you have healthy real black bees you can sell them easily. Black bees could be good pollinators under northern conditions. 
 
6) If your ferals are mongrelized with a lot of yellow bands, difference in swarming/colony size/aggresion than all of the above considerations are worthless. People have already destroyed the pure race and adding extra italians does not hurt. In that case I would still select local material for best wintering, good crops and calmness as the italians brought in might be selected under different conditions and do less good at yor location.
 
all the best,
Lennard 
 

 		 	   		  
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