110 EIGHTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 



Serbia horticulture is considered the chief farming industry, dairying 

 comes next, and bee-keeping comes third, and they put those three 

 together all the time. It is not a side issue with them. With them it 

 is a great source of income and one of the chief farm products. 



I found both bees and bee-keepers of interest. I have several 

 pictures, photographs, some of which I hope I will be able to make 

 into slides, showing what it means to keep bees under adverse condi- 

 tions. 



Now, the Balkan bee is somewhat a new variety. I tried to study 

 them as well as I could, although I was very busy down there, I had 

 little time. The Balkan bee resembles the Carniolan. She is a gray 

 bee, and a little smaller than the Carniolan, and a little more gray, 

 more whitish. They seem to have a few characteristics which other 

 bees have not. In the first place, they are very quiet in the comb, 

 but they follow you with the eye whereever you go. Then the second 

 characteristic is that they are not giving to robbing very much. 



I kept a few hives of bees down there last summer. One company 

 was kind enough when I went to Europe to send a whole ship-load of 

 agricultural implements and seeds, wheat, barley, oats and corn, 

 and plows, seeders, discs and threshing machines, a ship load, and 

 there was a little room in the ship just big enough so that they could put 

 in ten bee-hives, all complete for comb honey production, ten Root 

 Frame hives; they were packed five and five. Five .were stolen away, 

 somebody found that they had a good thing, but five got over there, 

 and as soon as we arrived in Salonica from the ship I had those five 

 sent out to our camp, took them apart, and had them put together 

 by a Serbian carpenter, and you should have seen those poor Serbian 

 soldiers down there. 



Now, to explain to you what they were doing down there, we 

 went there to help the Serbs to cultivate the immense field of land 

 located around the city of Monastir, about which you have heard 

 before. Monastir was probably the most bombarded city during this 

 war, with the possible exception of Verdun. Verdun in France was 

 bombarded for several months, but Monastir has been under fire for 

 four years steady. There was never a day when they did not fire into it. 



Now, Monastir is located aganist the hills, against the mountains,* 

 right in the corner. The mountains rise behind Monastir, up to the 

 height of 7,000 feet, but on this side is a beautiful pMn, through which 

 flows the river Cerna. The plain contains something Uke 171,000 

 hectares, or about 300,000 acres of land, and it is a beautiful fertile 

 plain, something like our Iowa fields, just plain, level alluvial land. 



Now, this land has been lying idle ever since the war commenced. 

 Before the war the native population, which consists of Macedonians 

 or Serbs, were cultivating their little patches of land. Of course they 

 had to pay a terrible duty to the Turks, whose only work in Macedonia 

 was to collect taxes. Still, the people cultivated some land up to the 

 time of the war. Afterwards they let the whole thing go, and the 

 cultivated land has grown up in weeds and the uncultivated land in 

 grass. The intention was that the Serbian givernment, which now 

 owns this land, was to break up that land, put it into crops, and feed 



