Seitentitel

by Paul Jungels
(Thanks to Prof. Gabrielle Weckering for English adaptation)
(kindly proofread "beekeepingly" by Richard Chapin+)

"Brother Adam, a delicate young boy, whose Christian name was Carl, applied to Abbot Vonier for admission to Buckfast Abbey. The Abbot was a bit doubtful about admitting the frail-looking little fellow, but at the last moment he remembered the Abbey's apiary. This might be just the right place for little Carl. Abbot Vonier, generally efficient in all he did, had once again made the right decision, for I know of no better bee-keeper and breeder than Brother Adam. In the whole history of bee-keeping, Adam (Carl) Kehrle holds a very special place of honor." [Armbruster, 1950]

With these words Professor Armbruster, the great visionary of German bee-keeping, began a report (in 1950) on the Buckfast apiary and the still virtually unknown Brother Adam. Today, 46 years later, there is probably not a single person who would contradict the prediction Professor Armbruster made at the time.

Carl Kehrle (Brother Adam's civil name) was born on 3rd August 1898 in Mittelbiberach (Schwaben, Germany) as the son of the village miller. Following his mother's express wish, as early as March 1910 he entered the Benedictine Abbey of Buckfast (in South-West England), whose inmates at the time were almost exclusively German. The young monk was just not strong enough for work on the reconstruction of the abbey, which was in process at the time. For this reason he was sent in 1915 to the Abbey's apiary, the management of which he took over in the autumn of 1919.

Here Brother Adam was confronted with a host of problems. In the years since 1916, the "Isle-of-Wight" disease, later identified as the tracheal mite, had wiped out 90% of the bee colonies in England. The Abbey's apiary was also affected. It had been forced to import bees, mainly from France, but also from Northern Italy. The native dark bee, the Northern variant of the Apis mellifera mellifera, had proved to be extremely vulnerable to the tracheal mite.

Brother Adam : "This race is a thing of the past. It no longer exists. It has been completely wiped out by the mite epidemic. Our tests and experiments have proved conclusively that the remains of the dark bee present in England today definitely do not stem from the old English bee, as has been conjectured from time to time, but from imports of the French variety."

Brother Adam made a strange discovery: cross-breeding of the Italian bee and the