Adrian Wenner wrote: > From reports, Africanized honey bee colonies pose little >more danger to us than what we routinely experience with yellow jacket >wasp colonies in this area. I wonder whether one couldn't go further and say From reports, Africanized honey bee colonies pose little or no more danger to us than what we routinely experience with yellow jacket wasp colonies in this area. One reason I ask consideration of this expression is that, from my position on the sidelines, the concept 'AHB' is extraordinarily vague, not connoting any precise genotype or phenotype. From what has been said on Bee-L the term 'AHB' has only vague meaning. My morbid interest in dangerous technologies has taught me that people are sometimes more interested in the hazard i.e. the extent of harm in the unlikely worst scenario, than in the risk i.e the probability of this disaster's occurrence. The media image is that AHB means hevi-doodi quasi-SF killer gangs - hazard 1 or a few people killed per hive, probability 1.0 ... but some remarks from USA beekeepers suggest 'AHB' can also mean far less dangerous strains of bee. Could it be that both the hazard and the risk have decreased considerably since AHB rampaged N of the Rio Grande? I can warn you the major commercial 'risk assessment' corporations - Arthur D Little, Science Applications Inc, etc - multiply hazard times risk and then call that 'risk'. We are talking hevi-doodi language-tampering here. Anyone dealing with legal regulations on bees should think about both hazard and risk. And of course the under-rated benefits of honey-bees must be accurately sketched in such democratic exercises. The few scientists in bee genetics are obviously outstripped by rapid changes in strains of bee. I really meant that about the confab. Better cooperation between researchers, commercial beekeepers, and amateurs, must be organised against mounting threats to bees from pesticides & gene-tampering. R