... The large body of near infrared observations presented in Testi et al. (1997; 1998) are analysed with the aim of characterizing the young stellar clusters surrounding Herbig Ae/Be stars. The results confirm the tendency of early Be stars to be surrounded by dense clusters of lower mass "companions", while Ae stars are never found to be associated with conspicuous groups. ... Only the most massive stars (10-20Msun) are found to be associated with dense (10^3 pc^-3) stellar clusters. ...