The following was printed in the Sept. 4 1996 copy of THE WASHINGTON POST, a
newspaper of general delivery in Washington, DC, USA
 
I hope no one hangs me for this, thought you all might want to see it. Sorry
if I made many typos.
 
 
BROTHER ADAM DIES; Monk was authority on Honeybees  -- by Richard Pearson,
Washington Post Staff Writer
 
Brother Adam, 98, a British Benedictine monk who took charge of his
monastery's ailing honeybee population during WWI and went on to become one
of the world's greatest authorities on bee-raising before being forced into
retirement in 1992, died of unreported causes Sept. 1.
 
Brother Adam, born Karl Kehrle in the old German kingdom of Wuertemberg, died
at a nursing home near Buckfast Abbey, the Benedictine monastery in Devon,
Eng., where he had been sent by his mother when he was 12.
 
In 1915, Brother Adam was sent to the part of the monastery where bees were
raised for their honey, largely for the monks' consumption.  In 1919, Brother
Adam became a full monk. By then, he was something of a "king" bee. He
recalled in a 1992 newspaper interview that in 1918 "all the bees in Britain
were destroyed by a disease they got from a parasite."
 
Shrugging off such problems as world war and Greek-Turkish strife, Brother
Adam went on to say "That's when I went out to Asia Minor and found a nice
friendly bee in Turkey. That got me interested in breeding queens resistant
to disease."
 
Brither Adam took to his role of beekeeper with an almost otherworldly
enthusiasm and success. His bee cross-breeding resulted in the legendary
"Buckfast Superbee," claimed by many authorities to be the hardiest and most
prolific honey producer ever bred.
 
In the 1990s, the US Agriculture Dept. turned to Brother Adam for help when
honey procuction in the US was severly curtailed by acarine disease, a viral
invection that had crippled British honey production 75 years before. The
monk sent off shipments of special Buckfast queen bees that  saved the day.
His acarine-resistant bees are said to have earned his abbey more than
$30,000 a year and is said to have a worldwide effect on honey production.
 
During the years, Brother Adam traveled more than 100,000 miles in search of
bees, visiting Asia, continental Europe and North America. He traveled by
car, donkey, and on foot. Before WWII, he had even searched for bees in the
Sahara. From the early 1950s to early 1980s, he concentrated his searches in
the Mediterranean world and the Middle East.
 
Only eight years ago, he travelled to Africa, where a fellow researcher
carried him on a bamboo chair strapped to his back up Africa's highest
mountain, Mount Kilimanjaro. Their quest in search for the area's Monticola
bee was filmed for television.
 
As his fame spread, Brother Adam's honors increased. He was awarded honorary
science doctorates from universities in Sweden and Britain. In 1974, he was
made a member of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.
 
Prehaps another measure of fame came to light in 1982, when police issued a
nationwide alert for two queen bees and 11 combs with worker bees and drones,
all stolen from Brother Adam's lab at the abbey.
 
The kidnap victims, who had been genetically engineered from Buckfast and
Greek strains by Brother Adam over a nine-year-period where memorably
described by police as "three quarters of an inch in length, with dark brown
and dark gray stripes."
 
Police were reported to have mobilized an estimated 4,000 Devon beekeepers to
help in the search.
 
As time marched on, it took its toll on Brother Adam. He maintained something
of a distracted air, with his white hair and the German accent he never lost.
By the early 1990s, Brother Adam, who had been described as "selectively
deaf" by some of his superiors, also had trouble keeping his balance and had
developed cataracts. A group of French beekeepers, chagrined that the famed
monk might have to give up bees, came up with more than $5,000 to secure the
services of one of France's leading eye surgeons.
 
Then, in 1992, disaster struck. A new abbot took charge and ruled that what
was described as genetic engineering foolishness had to stop. From then on,
bees were only to be raised for honey to be used by the monks or sold at its
gift shop. Breeders on four continents were outraged, venting their anger to
both the specialized and general press.
 
Brother Adam's search for an "environmentally green" bee that would end the
need for chemical additives to European honey had to be abandoned. Many felt
his work close to success.
 
He was the author of seven books, three of which are regarded as classics:
"Beekeeping at Buckfast Abbey," "In Search of the Best Strains of Bees," and
"Breeding the Honeybee."
 
On his "retirement," a popular plaint was that Brother Adam would not last
long without his bees and that he had enormous knowlege that he had yet to
share. The monthk disagreed, saying everthing he knew was in his books, but
that "I may have forgotten one or two things and didn't put them in my
articles,...lots of mystery in bees, you know."