> Part of my business here in LA is placing hives 
> in peoples' backyards, and mentoring the people 
> one-on-one in hive maintenance and beekeeping skills.

How much experience with bees have you had prior to this venture?

> If I worked with the kind of bees Dr Guzman describes, 
> I would have long ago been sued and be out of business. 

Or, you have simply yet to encounter the combination of hive and customer
that will put you "out of business". The lack of a response to my repeated
questions about insurance forces me to conclude that you carry no coverage,
and are risking your assets to the last dollar on this, which would be very
ill-advised.

> AHB traits are not in evidence except in a tiny fraction of the
population. 
> Those bees are removed from circulation and the queens replaced.

But this is based upon very informal and subjective criteria that proved to
be inadequate to protect the public in Florida.  There are many who have
hoped to profit from the increased interest in beekeeping among people who
hitherto would have been only gardeners, but few of them have been so bold
as to openly advertise that they are collecting swarms in an AHB area
without 100% unconditional requeening.

If your experience is as you state, what has happened to the 150 colonies
collected if only 20 hives are your own, and 20 are at the homes of your
clients?  Have you sold or given away the other colonies/swarms to people
you do not mentor?  If all these colonies can be checked for their long-term
docility, this would be an unexpected contradiction to the data and
consensus of any entire industry, so they would be well worth surveying.

If you have adequate records, 150 colonies are a large enough sample size
"for publication", even if all that is reported is "survey" data from the
owners of these hives, self-reported gestalt evaluations of colony
temperament.    

Here in NYC, the "feral survivor colonies and swarms" are amazingly docile,
and some have marked queens, which can be a pleasant surprise for the new
owner. :)

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