Subject: Brother Adam comments?

From: Gilbert Levin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 04 Sep 1996 12:56:23 -0600

I got the following piece of e-mail from Art Silverman at NPR today.  I 
couldn't offer much advice, but thought someone out in USENET-land 
might:

Personal_Name: Art Silverman
From: [email-masked]
Subject: Brother Adam
 
I am a producer with NPR's "All Things Considered"
We read this morning of the death of honeybee expert
"Brother Adam" in Britain. Who do you think we should
talk to to create our appreciation of his work? Do
you have phone numbers? You may write back.  Thank you.

-- 
Jordan L.K. Schwartz       !  University of Washington
Behavior OnLine            !  Department of Psychology
[email-masked]          !  [email-masked]
<http://www.behavior.net/> !  <http://weber.u.washington.edu/~jlks/>

---

From: [email-masked] (LJerger)
Date: 4 Sep 1996 22:50:35 -0400

I've been reading this group for a couple of months now and researching
beekeeping with the intention of acquiring two or three hives in the
future.  The comments about Brother Adam were somewhat cryptic to me. 
Fortunately, I purchased a New York Times today and read his obit.  For
the benefit of others who were as mystified as I, the following is
copyrighted by the New York Times and the Associated Press.

headline "Brother Adam, 98, Bee Breeder Who Developed New Varieties"
  LONDON, Sept. 3 (AP) -- Brother Adam, a Benedictine monk and a bee
breeder whose search for native strains took him to the remotest deserts
and highest mountains, died Sunday.  He was 98.
  He died Sunday in a nursing home near Buckfast Abbey, the Benedictine
monastery in southwest England where his mother sent him at age 12 in
1910.
  Brother Adam's cross-breeding work created the so-called Buckfast
Superbee, regarded by many apiarists as the healthiest and most prolific
honey producer ever bred.
  His honeybees were so highly prized that in 1982 thieves stole two
queens from the Buckfast Abbey apiaries.  Police even circulated a
description of the bees -- "three-quarters of an inch in length, with dark
brown and dark gray stripes."
  In 1991, the United States Department of Agriculture imported queen bees
that Brother Adam had bred to be resistant to acarine disease, which had
badly damaged honey production in America.  His acarine-resistant bees
earned the abbey more than $31,000 a year and revolutionized honey
production around the world.
  In one example of his travels in search of native strains of bees, a
fellow apiarist carried the 90-year-old Brother Adam on a bamboo chair
strapped to his back up Africa's highest mountain, 19.340-foot Mount
Kilimanjaro.
  He was born Karl Kehrle on Aug. 3, 1898, in the Wurttemberg region of
Germany.  He took over the abbey's apiaries when he became a full monk --
and Brother Adam -- in 1919.
  Traveling by car, on foot or by donkey, he took journeys before World
War II in search of bees that took him as far as the Sahara.  From 1950 to
1981, he searched for bees in the Mediterranean, the Middle East and
Africa.
  His bee research ended in 1992 because the monastery's new abbot the
Right Rev. David Charlesworth, insisted the main function of the abbey
apiaries was honey production, not research.
  To the disappointment of bee breeders worldwide, the obedient monk bowed
to the will of his superior.
  Brother Adam wrote three books, regarded as classics on the subject --
"Beekeeping at Buckfast Abbey," "In Search of the Best Strains of Bees"
and "Breeding the Honeybee."

RIP 

.

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From: [email-masked] (Adam Finkelstein)
Date: 5 Sep 1996 12:10:18 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
>you have phone numbers? You may write back.  Thank you.

They did the piece this morning.
Adam
-- 
_________________
Adam Finkelstein                    
[email-masked]