Hi All I just thought I would post three little anecdotes I have for and against african bees. A while back I went to Cradock a town a few hundred kilometer inland of where I live. This pust it in a zone where the bees are sort of between capenis (tame) and scutellata (not tame). I found a nice beehive in a tree and figured well lets have a look at them. I always have a beesuit with me when I go away so I put it on and had a look at the hive. I collect propolis so decided to try and get a sample. Before I had reached the hive (in a few hundred year old olive tree) the bees were hitting my veil like small hail stones. Opon reaching the hive, and taking a piece of propolis a long beard like thing of bees began litterally growing out of the hive and disintegrating as it got to about a foot length out of the hive. At this point I stood back and heard the bees find some zebras in the bush nearby as well as some vervet monkeys about fity meters away in a tree. I paced away from the hive and counted the number of paces I had to walk before I no longer had bees that could sting buzzing me. It come to just over 90 meters. After ten minutes when walking back the bees found me withing 50 meters of the hive. These were naturally not the sort of bee one would want to work with. On the other hand, there is a man in Zimbabwe who has been the government apiculturist there for many years. He has now retired but through an active and positive campaign he has developed both AHB that are easy to handle (my girlfriend has seen him work two such hives without any smoke at all and not get stung). So, given that there are positive aspects to the african honey bee, as well as negative aspects, just as there are positive and negative aspects to the european honey bee, why does someone not have the vision of early pioneers like brother Adam etc to bread a bee which will occupy the niche that the present AHB's are filling? Just a though Keep well Garth --- Garth Cambray Kamdini Apiaries 15 Park Road Apis melifera capensis Grahamstown 800mm annual precipitation 6139 Eastern Cape South Africa Phone 27-0461-311663 3rd year Biochemistry/Microbiology Rhodes University In general, generalisations are bad. Interests: Flii's and Bees. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this post in no way reflect those of Rhodes University.