Brother adam

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Karl Kehrle, 1991

Karl Kehrle OSB , OBE (born August 3, 1898 in Mittelbiberach , † September 1, 1996 in Buckfast Abbey , Devon ), also known as Brother Adam , was a beekeeper who, through breeding his Buckfast bee, became one of the pioneers of modern beekeeping in the United States Kingdom became.

Life

At the age of twelve, Karl Kehrle entered the English Benedictine Abbey of Buckfast at the instigation of his mother and chose Adam as the religious name . Since the construction work that was taking place in the monastery at that time was too strenuous for him, he was assigned to the monastery beekeeping in 1915, which he took over in 1919. In 1922 he made perpetual vows . Because of the acarapiosis , which was rampant in England at the time, in which only a few bee colonies survived in monastery beekeeping , he decided to break new ground in breeding . He found the necessary fundamentals for the application of heredity to the breeding of bees in Ludwig Armbruster's apiculture study of 1919. Assuming that honey bees were highly susceptible to inbreeding, he turned away from the generally known pure breeding as the sole breeding method.

Based on the teachings of Ludwig Armbruster , he used cross-breeding, combination breeding and pure breeding to breed a hereditary honey bee breed that met his requirements in terms of disease resistance, character traits and honey performance. To this end, he traveled since the 1920s systematically and consistently large parts of the world, starting in Europe and Asia and Africa, in order for suitable bee races to look, which he tested in his apiary to some in its population introgress . He named the resulting breed Buckfastbiene in honor of his home monastery .

Buckfast bee

The Buckfast bee , easily recognizable by the first abdominal rings in leather-brown to reddish color
Brother Adam at the entrance to the bee garden at Buckfast Abbey 1981. The breeding colonies are in the background

Brother Adam vehemently represented his views at many appearances around the world and thus became a recognized bee scientist who received honorary doctorates from the Universities of Exeter and Uppsala . In 1974 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and accepted as an officer in the Order of the British Empire (OBE).

Health reasons forced Brother Adam in 1992 to resign from his position as head of the monastery beekeeping, which he had held since September 1, 1919; the beekeeper suggested by him as his successor was rejected by the monastery management and the breeding was initially placed in the hands of an inexperienced monk. After this led to protests among Buckfast beekeepers (it was feared that the result of decades of breeding work would be lost), Brother Adam's assistant Peter Donovan took over the breeding. The breeding of the Buckfast bee, based on the breeding material passed on by Brother Adam and based on his breeding guidelines, is successfully continued by many beekeepers worldwide. Brother Adam's breeding legacy is actively cultivated and continued by the community of European Buckfastimker eV. Divided into regional associations, several hundred beekeepers actively take part in the annual breeding programs that are carried out based on Brother Adam's criteria.

filming

A decade after brother Adam's death, the film The Monk and the Honeybee , produced by David Taylor, was released.

The film was shot over 90 minutes in the apiaries at Buckfast Abbey Devon. He follows brother Adam to Sweden and Germany and to an apiary in the Bavarian Alps. The film accompanies him on an expedition to the slopes of Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, where brother Adam looked for and found the Apis Mellifera Monticola . He wanted to incorporate the docility and resistance to cold of this breed into the Buckfast bee.

literature

  • Ludwig Armbruster: Beekeeping , Theodor Fischer Berlin 1919 (reprint Ertl & Ertl, Vienna 2003)
  • Brother Adam: In search of the best bee stems , Verlag C. Koch, Oppenau 1983 ISBN 3-9800797-0-8
  • Brother Adam: My mode of operation: Successfully beekeeping as in Buckfast Monastery , Verlag C. Koch, Oppenau ISBN 3-440-09185-6
  • Brother Adam: Breeding the honeybee , Delta-Verlag 1982, ISBN 3-922898-02-5
  • Raymond Zimmer: The Buckfast Bee. Questions and Answers , Verlag C. Koch, Oppenau, 1987 ISBN 3-9800797-1-6 . New edition under the title: The Buckfastbiene. Publisher dasimkerbuch. 1st edition 2017 ISBN 978-3-00-055156-7
  • Lesley E. Bill: For the love of Bees - the story of Brother Adam of Buckfast Abbey , David & Charles, Newton Abbot / London / North Pomfret 1989, ISBN 0-7153-9261-1 (English biography)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Spiewok, Sebastian: A life for the Buckfast. In: German Bee Journal, 10/2012. Page 14. Deutscher Bauernverlag GmbH, Berlin.
  2. ↑ Spiewok, Sebastian: A life for the Buckfast. In: German Bee Journal, 10/2012. Page 15. Deutscher Bauernverlag GmbH, Berlin.
personal data
SURNAME Adam, brother
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kehrle, Karl (maiden name); Kehrle, Adam (religious name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German beekeeper of modern times and breeder of the Buckfast bee
DATE OF BIRTH August 3, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Mittelbiberach
DATE OF DEATH September 1, 1996
Place of death Buckfast Abbey , Devon