Did Brother Adam write about bee-keeping - pressed or un-pressed? ;-)

He wrote books about beekeeping. I never rated them as bee management
treatises althoug Beekeeping at Buckfast Abbey was interesting as part of
the story of the Abbey. What's more he was a very difficult author for his
publishers.

His service to beekeeping was to raise the profile of the craft among
non-beekeepers. His German origin, his coming here as a boy, his being a
monk, his association with Buckfast Abbey (already famous for the so-called
Tonic Wine) and his great age all endeared him and made him well kown to non
beekeepers - largely because he was the one featured in the media.

He was The Great Man and Buckfast Abbey, where he lived and worked is very
close to us. I seem to remember some real nastiness from a new Abbot who
removed him from his work with the bees and put a new and younger monk in
his place.

It wasn't nastiness, Bro. Adam was old, set in his ways, recalcitrant and
wouldn't listen to anyone else's ideas.

How many years was he a bee-keeper? It seems like many decades.

It was. But he had an army of assistants, especially in the last few
decades.

I first met him in the 1980s, already by then he was losing his magic among
those who were trying to keep beekeeping up to date. He refused to lose his
German accent, even though he'd been here for about seventy years. Sometimes
he refused to understand English. He'd sit in a chair and wait for people to
sit at his feet, he wouldn't answer questions, he was like a withered old
stick with a very frail and thin voice and his words were hardly audible
never mind understandable. He had a one track mind when it came to
beekeeping, he didn't make small talk.

So saying, I repeat that he did a great service to the image of beekeeping
in UK and it was a sad day when he died because there was no-one else to do
what he did. Who, outside beekeepers, can name another beekeeper? No-one,
unless they know one. In fact they still talk about 'that monk'.

But there have been and still are many other better beekeepers who have done
more for the craft than Brother Adam yet won't have their full recognition.
We're swimming in a small pond, Brother Adam made it bigger.

Mary