The Buckfast Bee is the Beekeeper's Bee
Our Bees
We keep a variety of honey bees known as Buckfast, and purchase our colonies from a local breeder who has a well established reputation. This variety is also the most common in Europe and is known as ‘THE beekeeper’s bee’ because of their calm, non-aggressive temperament and a strong resistance to some of the challenges that modern day bees have to deal with.
The installation of two new colonies in 2024
How the Buckfast saved a species
Buckfast bees were originally cross bred from a number of other varieties that proved resistant to a parasitic pandemic that swept through the UK in the 1920s, and practically wiped out the native British black honey bee.
In the later stages of the pandemic, a beekeeper at Buckfast Abbey in Devon, a monastery of the Saint Benedictine order, had 16 remaining colonies of bees that had a common factor. The queens in those colonies had been brought in from Italy and that had resulted in a cross breed of the genetic line with the British black.
Brother Adam (the Beekeeper at Buckfast Abbey) was tasked by the Ministry of Agriculture to follow up on this, and he began travelling and purchasing honeybee queens from Italy and France (as well as others from the Middle East) to explore cross breeding to create a consistent resistance to the parasitic epidemic. He wrote a book of his travels called ‘In Search of the Best Strains of Bees’ which tells all about his search for traits among honey bees while traveling throughout Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Quite some adventure for a monk in the Saint Benedictine tradition! In all, it took 70 years of work to establish the desired genetic traits and create the incredible variety known as Buckfast.
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Today, the pedigree of Buckfast bees is regulated by the Federation of European Buckfast Beekeepers in over 26 countries. One breeder lives within 30 minutes drive from Nalanda Monastery, and has been a huge support to us in the first year.
Resources on Brother Adam and the Buckfast honey bees
It is our collective and individual responsibility to to preserve and tend to the environment in which we all live.
~
His Holiness XIV Dalai Lama