I watched a one hour show this past weekend on the "Killer Bee".
It was very informative.  I do have a question regarding the escape from
captivity. In brief, the story is that the African bees were being kept
with queen excluders at the entrances in a controlled apiary. A worker
unknowingly removed the excluders and a number of swarms escaped. That
is how it all began.
 
        Well one item of reasearch presented in the show indicated that
queens that mate with Africanized drones and non-Africanized dones tend
to produce Africanized queens. If a hive produces a number of queen
cells the African ones hatch first, by about 1 day, and the non-African
get destroyed. This explains the fact the the African traits see to
dominate and have not hybridized as much a expected over time.
 
        Well it would seem to me that even if the worker had not removed
the queen excluders that the Africanized bee would have "escaped"
anyway. It may have already been out when the incident of blame occured.
I would expect that during routine hive maintenance many drones would
have taken flight, thus providing the Africanized genes to the general
population.
 
        So the endevour was flawed anyway and the individual that
removed the queen excluder only helped the process along.
 
        Comments anyone, especially from the acedemic/research community
would be appreciated.
 
        Regards,
 
                Jim Moore