Brother Adam (Karl Kehrle)

Karl Kehrle (1898-1996), known as Brother Adam, was a Benedictine monk at Buckfast Abbey and its beekeeper. He was born on 3 August 1898 at Mittelbiberach in Germany, and died at Buckfast on 1 September 1996, aged 98. Buckfast Abbey (the Church of St Mary) is at Buckfastleigh, just outside the National Park boundary.

The abbey's bee colonies were wiped out by Isle of Wight (acarine) disease around 1916. He bred a new bee in response, now known as the Buckfast bee. Sources disagree on when he took over the hives: 1915 in one, 1919 in another.

In June 1925 he set up an isolated mating station on Dartmoor for controlled breeding. The sources seen do not give its exact position.

He was awarded the OBE in 1973 and the German Bundesverdienstkreuz in 1974, with honorary doctorates from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (1987) and Exeter (1989). His books include Beekeeping at Buckfast Abbey, In Search of the Best Strains of Bees (1983) and Breeding the Honeybee (1987).

Image: Brother Adam, photograph of 25 April 1991 by Humboldt55, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.