Beekeeping At Buckfast Abbey

by Brother Adam

Methods used by Brother Adam, creator of the Buckfast Bee strain, to manage bee colonies in Devon, England. Emphasis on general observation.

Includes a section on mead making.

Genres: Reference

140 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1987

About the author

Karl Kehrle OBE, known as Brother Adam, was a Benedictine monk, beekeeper, and an authority on bee breeding, developer of the Buckfast bee.

Early in the twentieth century, one of the youngsters who came to Buckfast from Germany with a view to joining the community was assigned to assist Br. Columban. This was Br. Adam Kehrle. He began helping Br. Columban at the tender age of twelve, but he was destined to continue working with the bees for over seventy eight years and to become an international authority in the field.

Soon after Br. Adam joined Brother Columban, thirty out of the Abbey's forty-six colonies were wiped out by a disease known as Acarine. All of the bees that died were of the native British black bee variety. This bee was renowned for being hardy, but somewhat ill-tempered. The bees that survived the outbreak were all of Italian origin.

In 1919, after Brother Columban retired, Brother Adam was put in charge of the bees, and he set about rebuilding the colonies. His intention was to use cross-breeding to develop a new bee which would be hardy like the black bee, but disease-resistant like the Italian bee, and a good honey producer.

Brother Adam made extensive journeys all over the world to get breeding stock. He concentrated on countries with a distinct indigenous race of bees, going chiefly to isolated country regions where the purity of the native strains had been maintained. He even went to the Sahara. Over the years, he travelled more than 100,000 miles in search of bees.

(Wikipedia/Karl Kehrle)
(buckfast.org.uk)

Reviews

[Ahmad Abdi · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lot of insight and wisdom shared in this book.

This book enabled us to get a taste of how much Brother Adam mastered beekeeping and took it to another level where all details are important and everything works as a whole system.

Seems like a mission rather than just beekeeping.
No wonder the Buckfast bee is really a superb bee.

Overall a very good read.

[Josiah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bit dated, but still very pertinent to the beekeeping world. Otherwise it's a great book that goes into detail about the different traits that should be bred for in bees. Adam also describes his seasonal management, which was a bit dry because these tips can be found on Youtube which are expressed a lot more clearly. Also, I believe Mike Palmer's method is inspired by Adam.

[Tadge OBrien · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good read though not a ton of specifics. The generalization is enough if you read or watch other sources about beekeeping.