Published in 1983, the volume collects the detailed accounts of the long and numerous research trips throughout the Mediterranean area, to which the scholar personally identified and chose the queens of the purest strains of each breed, then introduced them to the abbey's apiaries in England, and then studied them for decades, breeding them in purity and in crossbreeding-as his famous comparative tests well document. In the journals of his travels, the backdrop is the scenery of countries very different from each other and in the history they are passing through: the monk's encounters with bees, beekeepers, personalities and institutions turn into fascinating tales that draw the reader into distant and now vanished worlds (even when it comes to Italy!). Documented by the photographs of the time, these journals full of reflections and considerations constitute a work of immense historical value for bee geography-not only of bees but also of man's work. Father Adam observes alpine valleys and deserts, forests and mountains, almost always in the flowering season and always from the point of view of bees and their lives, in very different habitats and grappling with different problems. All, as is his custom, without ever losing sight of the purpose and the practical goal, the search for the 'best variety of bees,' the treasure, to be brought back home, like a modern Jason, to be a gift to mankind.

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