Renowned Bee Breeder, A Monk, Dies At 98

Brother Adam, a Benedictine monk and one of the world’s leading bee breeders whose search for native strains took him to the remotest deserts and highest mountains, has died at age 98.

In one example, a fellow apiarist carried the 90-year-old Brother Adam on a bamboo chair strapped to his back up Africa’s highest mountain, 19,340-foot Mount Kilimanjaro. Their search for the area’s Monticola bee was filmed for TV.

The monk died Sunday in a nursing home near Buckfast Abbey, the Benedictine monastery in southwest England where his mother sent him at age 12 in 1910. No cause of death was stated and no funeral arrangements were announced.

Brother Adam’s cross-breeding work created the so-called Buckfast Superbee, regarded by many apiarists as the healthiest and most prolific honey producer ever bred.

His honeybees were so highly prized that in 1982 thieves stole two queens from the Buckfast Abbey apiaries. Police even circulated a description of the bees - “three-quarters of an inch in length, with dark brown and dark gray stripes.”