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."