Honeybees can be very gentle.  Talking to Joe Latshaw of the Ohio Queen
Breeders (http://www.ohioqueenbreeders.com/), the genes for aggression/
gentleness can be selected for and are accumulative.  Ie. by selective breeding
you can breed gentler, and gentler bees.  Cross a gentle bee with a aggressive
bee and the result is one that falls about halfway in the middle.  According to
Latshaw, aggressiveness is not linked in any way to honey production (unless
you consider robbing tendencies of aggressive bees, but that's just hurting
your
other hives), and thus can be selected for independently.

Latshaw selects queens for gentleness, brood production (which leads to
honey production), mite resistance/suppression and overwintering.  Their
numbers I saw this
spring were very impressive.  And they work bees without equipment and destroy
hives that have any propensity to stinging humans (though they have noted no
significant difference in the response to pests, skunks and the like).

I would love to try one of these queens as they sound like a joy to work
with, but they are
a bit out of my price range as he only produces artificially inseminated
breeder
queens at 500 each.  I hope though to try some open mated queens raised by
other breeders from his stock.

-Tim