Soon after Br Adam joined Br Columban, 29 of the 45 colonies kept at the Abbey were lost through a mysterious illness which was sweeping through the British Isles known as the Isle of Wight disease. The bees that survived the outbreak at the Abbey were all of Italian and Carniolan origin.

After Br Columban retired in 1919, Br Adam was put in charge of the Abbey apiaries and he set about restoring colony numbers and strengthening their resilience to Acarine, a parasitic mite which was believed, at that time, to be the cause of the Isle of Wight disease. His intention was to use crossbreeding to develop a new hybrid bee which was gentle, hardy, resistant to Acarine, and a good honey producer.

Brother Adam made extensive journeys all over the world to get breeding stock for this purpose. He concentrated on countries with a distinct indigenous race of bees, going chiefly to isolated country regions where the purity of the native strains had been maintained. He even went to the Sahara. Over the years, he travelled more than 100,000 miles in search of different strains of bees and this, coupled with many years of patient experimental crossbreeding, at his isolated mating apiary on Dartmoor, resulted in the creation of the Buckfast Bee™.