The Vigorous and Parasite Resistant Buckfast
Bees
Today the Buckfast
apiary still thrives and looking forward to proceed in the development of more
superior breeds especially those which are Varroa resistant as well as new
breeds with higher productivity. Thanks to Brother Adam.
The existence of this superior Buckfast bee
is a result of a long and diligent work of Brother Adam Kehrie from the
Buckfast Alley an old monastery in England. He dedicated almost all of his
entire life to beekeeping. When he died in 1996 at the age of 93, the Buckfast
bees has been recognized as a superior breed that possesses al the good traits
of a honey bee and highly admired by beekeepers around the world.
The story begun in the early 20th
century, when Karl Kehrie a 12 years old boy came over from German with a view
to join the community of Buckfast Alley which is also recognized for keeping
bees to fulfill its need for sugar and wax for making candles. He became a
young monk under the name of Brother Adam Kehrie who was then assigned to help
Brother Columban in keeping the bees.
Shortly after his assignment almost two
third of his colony, 30 out of 46, were invaded and killed by the acarine
parasitic mite or Acarine disease, an outbreak that killed thousands of bee
colonies in the British Islands at that time. This mite attacks the bee
tracheal tubes making them choked leading to a shorter lifespan.
Brother Adam found out that the remaining
16 colonies were hybrids between the Italian bee and British native black bees.
The truly native black bees died during the outbreak, although they are well known
as tough bees but rather bad tampered. Upon the retirement of Brother Columban,
Brother Adam was assigned to manage Buckfast beekeeping.
He made a plan to rebuild the colonies with
a clear objective to develop a new breed that is strong like the black bees and
at the same time possesses resistance against disease like the Italian bee by
the means of cross-breeding.
He spent time to travel more than 100,000
miles to search for distinct original bee races mainly in countries were the
native strains had been genuinely kept and maintained. After years of long and
diligent breeding experiments carried out at the breeding station of Dartmoor the final result was the Buckfast bee.
The superior Buckfast possesses many
positive traits that include: a good pollen collector, highly tolerant to
tracheal mites, very gentle, low sting instinct, chalkbrood resistant, low
swarming instinct and they do well in winter times.
However there is a main disadvantage of the
Buckfast bees which is that they are very generous in the use of propolis to
adhere the surfaces of their hive, which is against the principle of the modern
hive where the comb should be easily removed for inspection.