Hi, Brent.
Well, there's no short answer to these questions, but I'll try to be as concise as I can.
In fact, AHB is not a homogeneous race and the "mean" trait varies a lot. My (unforgetable) meaner hive was so nasty that the bees would get off the hive to attack me as soon as I smoked them by the entrance. They left in waves and jumped on me, trying to explore any crack in my suit and even going down my boots, to get my ankles. They also knocked hard at my mask all the time. And all of that *before* I opened the hive.
It's not a nice picture, but, in fact, that extreme situation is far from common. In average, we manage colonies less aggressive than that. And, like any other race, AHBs aggressiveness is subject to the colony size, nectar flow and the weather. One day, you need almost no smoke, the other, you need it a lot.
In short, you need only two things to deal with aggressiveness: apiary isolation and specific equipment. The isolation is not necessarily the 500-meter distance from people and animals that is advocated by several authors. A good obstacle, like a small hill or trees will work perfectly. My house, for example, stands about 150 m from the apiary, with some 50 m of woods in between, and never-never-ever the bees got anyone but me (in the apiary when I was working, of course). I also have dogs and chickens around there, and they don't get stung either. The woods also help me to get rid of the follower guard bees very easily - I only need to walk among the trees in a zig-zag path (sometimes, I have to puf a little smoke in the air too).
I believe that the clothing is similar to yours, but probably more reinforced. Full suit (nylon, cotton or albene), boots, a mask with a hard screen and leather or rubber gloves. With the meaner colonies, you have to use two suits and tape the legs around the boots. Some beekeepers work mainly without gloves and there are even some who don't wear the mask sometimes (just to show "courage" to friends, I think). Maybe the most different equipment is the smoker. Ours is much larger than yours, and can produce a lot more of smoke for a greater period of time.
Now, what is good about AHBs? First and mainly, they don't need any drugs or special procedures to stay healthy. Yes, they do suffer with varroa, but we don't even look at the contamination rate. If the colony is not strong enough, we just requeen it ou unite it with a stronger one, and that's it. There is EFB here, but it's not important. Acarapis woodi and nosema aren't in our repertoire. We never had AFB in Brazil - I mean never, no one case registered - despite it exists in Argentina and Uruguay (which are not totally africanized). Second, they perform better in tropical climate than the europeans. I live in the subtropical southern Brazil, and even here they outperform by far the europeans (at least the carniolans I tested).
What is bad? Well, I don't like the aggressiveness, but many others do. (I think "defensiveness" is a non-specific, politically correct expression, but not precise enough to qualify the kind of reaction we are talking about). The reason is exactly what Eric discovered and reported here some days ago - robbery gets more dificult to be accomplished. Anyway, we get used to it in such way that gentleness is not a criterium of selection used by the majority of the queen breeders anymore. And I should add that the mean colony I mentioned above was also my best honey producer in 18 years (but, to be fair, the second place was much more gentle).
We still have some accidents with people who know nothing about bees and meet them by chance, but they are not as common as they used to be some decades ago.
The excessive swarming trait is another bad thing we have to deal with. Gradually, I'm getting to the solid conclusion that a new AHB queen is good just for the next nectar season, which means that, from now on, I'll have to requeen my hives twice a year. By the way, to find an AHB queen is a very hard task, because the workers tend to protect her very well.
Regards,
João