> As one of the sadly misinformed people I have to disagree.

As the one who used the phrase, I must apologize. Very poor choice of words. At any rate, there certainly seems to be a divergence of opinion on the topic. The situation is somewhat the reverse in China, where the European honey bee has had a devastating effect on Apis cerana, according to a very recent (2011) publication.


QUOTED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY:
FROM: Honeybees of Asia. H.R. Hepburn l S.E. Radloff Editors. # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011

"A. mellifera was first introduced into China in the 1920s (Kuang and Kuang 2002). Since then, A. mellifera began to be widely adopted in Chinese beekeeping. ... the negative aspects have been widely neglected and few if any had realised the strong impact of A. mellifera both on the environment and the local honeybees, especially A. cerana, until the 1980s. A. cerana has become extinct in the Daxinganling forest areas in the northeast and in XinJiang province in the northwest. In the Northeast Plain and North-China Plain areas, all A. cerana bees in man-made hives have absconded. In the past, millions of A. cerana colonies were kept on the plains of the drainage area of the Yangtze River, but are now hard to find. [ ... ] In conclusion, the introduction of A. mellifera into China caused great losses of A. cerana colonies. The population of A. cerana colonies is now estimated at not more than one million, a decrease of some 60% following the introduction of A. mellifera, and their distribution has shrunk by 75%."

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