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basic principles of Brother Adam's procedures. All too often, however, their originator is forgotten, or simply ignored. One only needs to mention:

Unrestricted breeding room for honey-producing colonies.
Awareness of the vulnerability of the honeybee to consanguinity.
As well as the resulting evidence with several colonies of drones.

This important technical and breeding knowledge was consistently applied by Brother Adam from 1930 onwards and continues to be used without alteration to the present day.

The decisive impulse to a change of ideas and practice in bee-keeping -- particularly in German-speaking countries -- was given by Brother Adam in two lectures which showed the direction to be taken:

1953, about breeding methods in Hanover,
1960, about working-methods in Kassel.

These two lectures also form the basis of Brother Adam's book "Bee-Keeping at Buckfast Abbey". In his introduction, K.A. Eickmeyer wrote in 1969: "We must be grateful that Brother Adam followed the advice of his German bee-keeping friends to publish his bee-keeping experience in book form. This step ensured the preservation of the extensive experience of this expert, and gave a new impulse to the discussion of methods used today in the German-speaking countries. Thus, although this book deals chiefly with past and present experience, it is very much oriented towards the future."

It was only after persistent persuasion from his closest friends that Brother Adam published a comprehensive work "Breeding the Honeybees", in 1982. In the introduction he wrote:

"I realize that a large number of my explanations will be of only academic interest to many bee-keepers. But every well-informed bee-keeper should know the purpose of the selective breeding of honeybees. He should also know that the breeding of honeybees is a law unto itself and that we have had to cope with problems that do not arise in the breeding of animals or plants."

The writer of these lines first met Brother Adam in Strasbourg in January 1982, on the occasion of a lecture on the subject of "The Elimination of Bee-Diseases through Breeding". In April of the same year, Brother Adam presented his aforementioned book "Breeding the Honeybees" in the course of the Centenary celebrations of the Kologne Bee-Breeding Association. Over 400 delegates, stars of the bee-keeping world, hobby- and professional bee-keepers from all over Europe, thanked the master bee-keeper in an