Bob writes:
> Hot hives are not common today even in the commercial operations in Mexico.

I wonder how you get that idea? Do you go to Mexico and work bees? My information comes from Dr. Guzman-Novoa who assured me that Africanized bees are no good for American style beekeeping. 

He also points out that while Brazilian honey production has skyrocketed, it is not due to greater productivity of African bees. It is due to the fact that European bees never prospered in Brazil. Now there are thousands of times as many hives, but the per hive production is NOT as good as European bees. 

> Collins et al.  demonstrated that worker honey bees from Africanized colonies in Venezuela responded to a visual target stimulus 20 times faster than Europeans and deposited 8.5 times more stingers in the target in 30 sec. Guzman-Novoa and Page found that increasing the proportion of Africanized parentage in a colony caused an increase in the number of stings and the speed of response. But colonies consisting of all hybrid workers resembled the Africanized behavioral phenotype for the numbers of stings, indicating dominance for the colony-level response in their study in Mexico. -- Genetics 148: 1203–1213 (March, 1998)

Bob writes:
> Many have spent time in the yards of Dee Lusby and report her bees are manageable.

We saw Dean's videos of the Arizona bees. They went in dressed to the max, prepared for the worst, and within minutes the bees went berserk. Bees were attacking the camera with a fury I have rarely seen except from hives that were run over by a truck.

Anyway, the argument is pointless. The ABF and the AHPA put a stop to imports from Australia for lesser reasons and I doubt that they will turn around and welcome bees from Mexico. Do you think they have no clout at all? Nobody in the US wants bees from Mexico. The almond growers made no effort to support importation from Australia, when APHIS called for comments.

PLB

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