HTEENTH ANNUAL EEPOBT OF THE 



thgfee mountafi^^S,nd they have thunder-storms and rains up on the 

 mountains, but tfepse clouds never once left the mountain. Just as 

 soon as a cloud atWhed itself to the mountain, it disappeared, it was 

 raining up on the y)p of the hills. We were up in the moilhtains, and 

 it was beautiful, green, flowers everywhere, carpets and carpets of 

 flowers, and the prevailing plant was Thyme, a small kind of Thyme, 

 so that when you walked the aroma of the crushed plants would be 

 on all sides. There were plants that I don't know, but it was like a 

 carpet, a beautiful thing, I never saw anything as nice as the hill tops 

 and the valleys among those mountains. And from the valley the 

 bees had to go and climb up those hills, away up, and bring the honey 

 down in the valley, that is the manifest truth. The next green spot 

 to our camp was eight miles away. 



A. Member. — Howl far were the flowers in the mountains from 

 wherelthe bees were? J 



__,,,JReoF. Jager. — I juHge about eight miles that the bees had to go. 

 I can't^ee possibly where^they could have got one flower nearer than 

 that, because I went all around those hills, I was taking pictures, 

 photographs of all kinds of things, especially pictures of soldiers that 

 were killed in the battles around there: they were somewhat dried 

 up by t^e heat of the sun, some were skeletons. I took pictures of 

 many ofjthose, and looked foiMflowers, and never found any. 



A Member. — Did you happen to stumble on that location, or 

 were you sent there? 



Prof. Jager. — No, we knew about that place. It was the same 

 with that place in Monastir, he said his bees had, to go about three 

 miles up in the mountains. 



A Member. — Was there any difference in the bees that you took 

 there and the ones that you found there? 



Prof Jager. — They were the same bees, the Balkan bee. 



A Member. — I thought you tried out some from here, and some 

 you got there too. 



r"of. Jagkr. — It was the gray Balkan bee. 



A Member. — Do you think that the locality several miles from 

 re is as good for producing honey, that is what I was trying to get at. 



Prof. Jager. — Well, if I was keeping bees down there I would 

 take them right up in the mountains. 



A Member. — Any direction you might go? 



Prof. Jager. — Any direction you might go, because those moun- 

 tains are a wonder — a wonder of flowers. I saw some like that perhaps 

 in some places in the Rocky Mountains. While I was working with 

 those bees they never robbed. The frames I cut out, I put into a box 

 next to the bee yard, with .the idea that they would get the honey. 

 They never touched it; they just kept going up in the mountains. 

 Now, this Balkan bee would bear a little more investigating. I brought 

 one bee with me a year ago, I introduced her to my apiary in Minnesota^ 

 and then I told my man who had charge of my business last summer, 

 I marked the hive and said: "Pay particular attention to that Balkan 

 bee, so that she does not perish. " . When I came back he told me that 

 he did not know where she was. I. could not find the marked hive 



