>He might have had one great advantage in that races were more pure in his day. When he crossed X with Y, he knew to expect Z. The pure races tended to breed consistently. Today our bees are more mixed.

Let's be honest here: Brother Adam was on an ego trip.  He had a great life travelling the world and brought back many races  of bees to the UK.  He crossed these to produce a bee that suited his purposes, i.e. slow build-up (there was little early forage in Devon at the time) and peaking for the heather crop in August.

It is unfortunate that this bee has now become a cult with some beekeepers; it does not breed true and can cause huge temper problems when crossed with other local bees.  Anyone keeping Buckfast bees is doing a huge disservice to other local beekeepers.

I have to accuse Brother Adam of dishonesty.  He must have known that the British dark bee was not wiped out by Acarine (or CBPV) as he claimed.  So many beekeepers can attest to this.  We can only conclude therefore that he made those statements because he wanted people to believe that - and to promote his own hybrid as a replacement.

Now those of us wanting to breed native bees have an incredibly difficult task because of the introduction of so many different races.  Of course it is not all down to Brother Adam, but his work has not helped.  This year we have seen some of the best crops for a number of years - and the most native bees have definitely been the stars of the show.

Best wishes

Peter 
52°14'44.44"N, 1°50'35"W

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