Buckfast bee

The Buckfast bee is a breed of honey bee, a cross of many subspecies and their strains, developed by Brother Adam (born Karl Kehrle in 1898 in Germany), who was in charge of beekeeping from 1919 at Buckfast Abbey in Devon in the United Kingdom. Breeding of the Buckfast bee is now done by breeders throughout Europe belonging to the Federation of European Buckfast Beekeepers (G.D.E.B.).^[1] This organization maintains a pedigree for Buckfast bees,^[2] originating from the time of Brother Adam.

In 1916, only 16 surviving colonies were left in the abbey. All of them were either Ligurian (A. m. ligustica) from Italy or Ligurian queens mated with the English black bee (a now extinct phenotype of the A. m. mellifera); by 1919 these bees too had died causing Brother Adam to import queens again from Italy and also France, from which he began to develop what would come to be known as the Buckfast bee.