a couple of Bill T snips followed by my comment.. 

I think that he is confusing Brother Adam's Buckfast bees behavior and
transferring it to all bees. They seem to turn bad after about three swarms.

>There is a concept in breeding that is called 'reversion to the mean'.  Basically the farther you move away from the desired cross (ie hybrid) the more undesirable traits of the parent stock begins to show up.  This has often played out in 'hybridized' honeybees not only in Buckfast bees but certainly earlier in regards to midnights.  Interesting number (3) Bill!
 
I define a bad hive as one whose bees will seek you out in the back yard
and sting you for no good reason.That is what the store bought queen's bees
did. It was an Italian and well before AHB.

>In my experience years ago with commercial honey producers they would tolerate a bit more defensive bee and generally though they would harvest a bit more of a honey crop.  Casually it seem to me to me that at the hive level they were also more robust.  In my own experience (but definitely much more current) some of the Minnesota Hygienic bees can also be a bit testy 

If so, then growing your own queens would also lead to such regression, but
that also does not seem to happen.

> My original beekeeping mentor (purely a sideliner with never more than 40 hives) in West Virginia reared what appeared to be german black bees.  These were smallish and extremely fierce.  At the time (I was perhaps 13) I though this was about the a.m.m. background of the bees but much later on decided it was a clear case of inbreeding. 

>Would a hive defensive nature give it a slight competitive advantage especially in an environment where a beekeeper was doing no culling of those that do predictable act a bit too testy?

Gene in central Texas

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