ILLINOIS STATE BEE-KEEPERS' ASSOCIATION. 115 



(down to the creek to wash theij clothes, and a shell fell right in front 

 of them in the water and killed ten of them. And in this way they 

 killed many thousands of them. Mostly it was innocent people, who had 

 nothing to do with the war. 



Now, in this city of Monastir, right on the outskirts, next to the 

 depot — the depot has not been used for four years, no train ran into 

 the depot for four years, and the bridges have all been ruined — next 

 to the railroad there was a beautiful little garden, walled in on four 

 sides, about ten acres of land. In there were apple trees and fig trees, 

 pears, peaches, potatoes, a beautiful garden, just like you have here, or 

 like you would wish to have. And in one corner stood a two-story 

 brick house, leaving a place about as big as this (indicating) between 

 the wall and the house, and this place, walled on two sides and pro- 

 tected on the third side by the dwelling, or the house — ^which, by the 

 way, had five shell holes in it, with the roof knocked off partly and four 

 or five rooms entirely ruined — in that corner there I found forty hives 

 of bees, and the man who kept those bees was a little fellow, about 

 so high. His name was Otsevitch. 



Now, the hives resembled a trunk, one of those trunks with two 

 handles on, one on each side. You close the lid down and lock it up. 

 Just the size of one of our trunks. Into that trunk were fitted frames 

 of the Jumbo size, all made at home, a frame with foundations, which 

 that man is making himself from some Italian patterns. The foundation 

 is about a quarter of an inch thick, and weighs about a pound per sheet, 

 but any way that man is progressive enough to realize that he must 

 have foundation. He made the frame himself, and the foundation, 

 which he showed me. He was proud to show me that he was doing 

 something. Then he realized that he must have that foundation 

 strenghtened, and he strung wires across this way, then strung the 

 wires on the other side of the foundation, first on this side and then on 

 the other side he put wires through and tied it together. Well, that 

 is the idea, you see he is working along the same lines, he is reasoning 

 out things. He does not know anything about American ways, but 

 still his instinct is leading him in the right direction. 



Now those frames hang down to the bottom of the trunk, about 

 that deep and about that wide (indicating), regular barn doors. And 

 that is the way he breeds his bees. In the spring he puts four or five 

 frames just where the bees would come in the center, puts a division 

 board on each side, and packs it with hay and straw on both sides to 

 keep them warm. Then when they increase he moves the division 

 board and keeps adding frames until the whole box is full, and they 

 hold twenty-seven frames, twenty-seven Jumbos. He removes the 

 outside frames and he extracts the honey. He made an extractor 

 himself, he read something about extractors and he manufactured one 

 himself out of old sheet iron he got from the French, out in the battle 

 fields, he picked up loose pieces, and with a little file and a hammer 

 he fixed for himself an extractor. I can't describe it to you, but it 

 is a most wonderful little thing. It is like a coffee-mill, it turns by 

 hand. And he took out of those frames, out of those forty hives — I 

 figured it out in American money — the honey that he took out of those 

 hives would amount to something like 140 to 150 pounds. That is 



