Or is the African bee wild card too dangerous to play with?

If one could assure that only mild-tempered AHB colonies were propagated, or that  the mean ones were always  kept  distant from residential areas, I might agree about  the varroa adaptation. 


But,  I've encountered AHB in its worst form (one case was an all out explosion of an AHB colony in Guatamala, another wwas a set of abandoned, turned feral, colonies in  San Antonio, TX).  I've video of them attacking - it's unreal.   Also, Dr, Gerry Loper, before and for a long period after he retired from Tucson bee lab, kept a yard of AHB colonies.  In addition to being  mean, these bees produced huge amounts of alarm pheromone and lots of venom from all of the stings.   Gerry now has a soft, almost whispery voice.  He attributes it to exposure to the  AHB chemicals.   


One  has to ask, if even one person dies because  of an AHB colony, is that worth the possible  advantage of varroa adaptation?  That said, maybe  it's not  AHB per  se that should be culled, but ANY overly  aggressive bees?



As most of you know, I grew up on a dairy farm.  Our Holsteins were uncommonly large.  Our breeder bulls tipped the scales at 3200-3800 pounds.  We were never hurt by any of  them, but  we didn't hang out inside the pen with them, and we kept tight control over them.  We had one  that we never turned our back on - he could change from all friendly, wanting  his ears scratched, to a monster attacking at full run.    He  carried an 8 ft chain on his  nose  ring - so that when he  tried a charge he'd step on the chain and do a summersalt.  But he got smart, would  swing  his  head and toss the chain over his neck before he  charged.  Then he  learned to swing  the  chain in a arc between the 2x12 horizontal fence boards.  He was very sneaky about that trick, and we had to put  up signs warning any visitors to  stay at least 10 ft from the  fences.   Great breeder, but nasty tempered, and really smart for a bovine.   He was a known risk to us, and we fully understood the risk.  But we kept him and anyone other than my dad or myself away from that pen.   So he  was a contained  risk.   But  jumping  into that pen with him  would be like walking into an AHB yard and kicking  hives.










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