Beekeeper
Buckfast
Search For The Best Bee
The Buckfast breed was created at Buckfast Abbey in 1920 by the breeding work of Brother Adam.
THE ORIGIN OF THE BUCKFAST STRAIN
— According to Brother Adam's typewritten document —
1915: This was the last year that the native black bee breed was still present in our area before the Isle of Wight epidemic wiped it out completely. In the autumn the beekeeping council in this area predicted that by the following spring all the bees would probably be dead. Of our 46 hives, 16 survived the winter. The survivors were either pure Italian (Ligurian) or their crosses.
1916: With the help of divisions and imported Italian queens, the number of colonies was increased back to 46 hives. After the disappearance of the native bee, no more symptoms of the disease were seen.
1917: At the request of the country's government, the number of municipalities was increased to one hundred. The necessary queens were bred from the stock that survived the winter of 1915-1916.
1918 - 1919: During these two years, hundreds of broods were sent out all over Britain to replace the losses from the Isle of Wight epidemic. The necessary queens were bred from the stock that had survived the epidemic. Among the queens bred in 1919 was one queen that had all the desirable characteristics of both the Italian and the original black bee. This queen was later named Breeder No. B-1, and is the starting point for the current strain.
1920: In 1920, nearly a hundred dams were bred from the Breeder No. B-1 dam. The same number of dams were also bred from a dam brought from Nicosia, Cyprus.
1921: Breeder No. B-1's offspring exceeded all expectations in 1921.
1922: Two daughters of Breeder No. B-1 were taken for brood rearing. The daughters of one - No. B-2 - proved to be resistant to the internal mite, while the daughters of the sister queen, No. B-3, proved to be extremely susceptible to the internal mite. The susceptibility to the internal mite was so great that hardly any hives with a daughter of B-3 as a brood queen survived the winter of 1922 – 1923.
Links:
Varroa mite breeding work
Lunden Resistant Queen - The breeding work for the Varroa-resistant bee strain began in 2001, when the hives were given the last mite control in August. From then on, the mites were only controlled with oxalic acid, with a smaller amount each year, until the last 3 ml oxalic acid acidification was given in November 2008. After this, no control has been done. The breeding process was not easy, it took about 10 years, during which Juhani added, among others, the Primorsk varroa-resistant strain to his strain. During the breeding work, winter losses were at their worst 70%, sometimes only 4 hives survived. Due to harsh natural selection, Juhani achieved a rare result in the bee world, which has been confirmed by leading European breeders, including Paul Jungels from Luxembourg and Jurgen Brausse from Germany. The final conclusion of 4 years of testing: "Lunden Line 85 does not require any Varroa control." These queens are currently used extensively in Central Europe where beekeeping can no longer be carried out, even with pesticides.
Evidence of the cleaning ability of Lunden Varroa Resistant Queens.
Lunden Resistant Queens - broodstock