Peggy asks many good questions concerning keeping European bees in an
Africanized area.  I will try to help her understanding.
Peggy, your attempt to find more information to pass on to your
non-beekeeping neighbors is admirable.  Have you talked to the beekeeper?
My guess is that he or she would welcome your approach and would go into
great detail concerning how she intends to be a good neighbor, and have her
bees be good neighbors as well!

"Hundreds of bees
are now ending up in the neighbors yards, mostly in the pool and the
yard when it is being watered."
Yep, bees need lots of water at the time of the year when nectar is not
available.  Nectar contains up to 90% water, so when nectar is available
bees get their water from that source.  They use the water to cool their
hive and to dilute honey to feed it to their brood.  If the beekeeper has
lots of water, I am surprised that the bees are also getting water from
others.  Perhaps the beekeeper did not make the water available soon enough
(probably in February in your climate), and the bees became acclimatized to
water available elsewhere.  This is a good question to ask the beekeeper.

"What can these people do to protect their families from the bees? Is
there something that can be done to make these yards safe from these
bees?"
I do not know of anything that will keep bees away from a given area.
Perhaps others will have some suggestions.  That said, foraging European
honey bees will not attack people unless they are pretty threatened.
Unfortunately, being stepped on by a bare foot, rolled on by a bikini-clad
teenager, or having a hand put on top of a bee drinking by a pool, all
qualify as "severe threats".  I think the same is true of Africanized
bees...while foraging, they will not attack unless under severe threat.
However, this is also true of all wasps, native bees, etc.  I can't be of
much help on this one.

"The  beekeeper has docile bees now, but will they stay that way?"
Again, this is an excellent question to ask your beekeeper neighbor.  If the
beekeeper is expert and wants to keep the bees gentle, it can easily be
done.  It requires regular re-queening (from a queen breeder certain to be
producing gentle bees), and keeping strong hives that will resist invasion.

I hope I have helped and you can all quickly get back to being good
neighbors.
Lloyd

Lloyd Spear Owner, Ross Rounds(tm).  The finest in comb honey production.
http://www.rossrounds.com