Actually, you can get sued for any stinging incident, AHB or not.
However, it gets more difficult for a plaintiff to go much from there
unless the beekeeper is shown to be grossly negligent. That usually
comes from his/her beekeeping practices.

Which was my point.

I did exaggerate with the cowering appellation, so, for that, I cower in
abject humility :)

There have been several BeeL threads on the legal problems associated
with stinging incidents. There also have been many excellent articles in
Gleanings. Plus, there is lots on the web. The beekeeper is actually
fairly protected by the law if they practice good beekeeping.

My guess is, if AHB gets a foothold in an area, it would be more
difficult to sue a responsible beekeeper since now there would be more
science on their side. Plus, AHB would always be blamed.

In Maine, many of the stinging incidents are by yellow jackets but
"bees" are identified as the culprit. The only time I had a problem with
my bees was when I let them clean out supers in the fall. I was told
that was how to clean them out before storage.

I did not realize my bees would be all over the neighborhood looking for
other "nectar" sources. They kept a neighbor in her house. They were
buzzing around her door (about 800 feet away from the colonies) and
frightened her.

That was many years ago and I have never allowed them to clean out fall
supers since. That was bad beekeeping, and I was a bad neighbor. Not to
mention the bad advice I got from "experienced" beekeepers.

Bill Truesdell (now a certified experienced beekeeper therefore
qualified to give bad advice)
Bath, Maine

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