The Buckfast hybrid bee was a honeybee developed by "Brother Adam", (born Karl Kehrle) in 1898 in Germany, who was in charge of beekeeping at Buckfast Abbey. Bee populations were being decimated by "Isle of Wight" disease. This condition, later called "acarine" disease, after the acarine parasitic mite that invaded the bees' tracheal tubes and shortened their lives, was killing off thousands of colonies in the British Isles in the early part of the 20th century.

Brother Adam began importing resistant stock from other nations, creating a vigorous, parasite resistant hybrid honeybee known as the Buckfast bee among beekeepers. This ignited a controversy with some beekeepers, led by Beowulf Cooper, declaring that hybrids were not good for British beekeeping and seeking to find remants of the British black bee that Brother Adam had declared extinct, from which to breed back to a pure strain, as close as possible to the original bee. Cooper founded an association, now known as the Bee Improvement and Bee Breeders' Association, to improve and propagate the British bee.

The Buckfast bee is popular among beekeepers and is available from bee breeders in several parts of the world. Most of their qualities are very favorable. They are extremely gentle, and some authorities rate them higher than the Italians in most categories. Their main drawbacks are that they have a strong tendency to lock combs together with brace combs, and they are very liberal in their application of propolis to inner surfaces of their hives, thus acting to defeat one of the main purposes of the modern beehive -- that combs should be easily removable for inspection.

External links

• Brother Adam and the Buckfast Bee (http://www.buckfast.org.uk/bees.htm) at the Buckfast Abbey's home page
  
• Bee Improvement and Bee Breeders' Association (http://www.bibba.com)