> Does anyone have experience with these bees? Are there any import restrictions on bringing these bees to the mainland?

I have not had first hand experience with the bees from PR. However, there are many reasons for not introducing them to the mainland, whether it's legal or not. 

The introduction of African bees was one of the greatest miscalculations ever made regarding the introduction of organisms into a new environment. It had an impact on millions of people's lives, and has been a major force of alteration of ecosystems spanning continents. Bottom line, you don't know in advance the effect of moving species from one part of the world to another.

The Africanized bee is a special sort of genetic complication. African bees in Arizona are vicious and test Africanized. African genotypes have incurred into California and present a range of combinations of genes & behavior. In the east, bees that behave like African bees, test negative for African dna markers. The PR bees presumably are positive for African genes but are not vicious. 

So, what we may be looking at: recessive traits for bad behavior; dna markers that ID parentage but not behavior; hybrids that are either docile or vicious, depending on parentage, etc. Bringing the docile bees to mainland could produce combinations that generate hostile bees, with or without expressing the dna markers which are used to ID the bees.

I have already had bees which were vicious but ID'd as European, so despite NYS law prohibiting African bees, these would not be considered such since they test European (I killed them). Meanwhile, if you had PR bees, even if they weren't bothering anyone, if they were ID'd as African they could be taken from you by the state and you could be fined for harboring a prohibited species. I am not suggesting this is a likelihood, but why bother.

PLB

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