for his own use and sold the balance to his neighbors at twenty-five 

 dollars per colony, thereby setting Delta County's agricultural ball 

 a-rolling. 



A start in bees was expensive in those days, and it was likewise 

 expensive to run them in an up-to-date way; for hives, sections, 

 shipping cases, and in fact everything was high in price and diffi- 

 cult to obtain. So it transpired that notwithstanding bees increased 

 very rapidly and honey sold for twenty-five cents per pound in the 

 local market, bee-keeping as a business made but little headway. By 

 this time (1893) bees were in the possession of nearly every ranch- 

 man, but declining prices in honey and the panicky times brought 

 to an untimely end many high hopes. 



Only a few of our pioneers — Miss Rose Kennicott, Mr. Geo. T. 

 Conklin, and Mr. Geo. Fogg — kept on producing honey for market 

 in a large way, honey then being worth only seven to eight cents 

 per pound. This marked the ebb tide in the bee industry of our 

 county. 



It was at this stage that the writer, having come to this country 

 from Baltimore in J 892 at the age of twenty-three years, for his 

 health, entered the field of apiculture. To find an out-door occu- 

 pation, not requiring very heavy work and yielding fairly good 

 returns for money invested and labor performed, was the object 

 sought. Two bee papers, a text book, fifty colonies of bees in box 



-■•^I'^'i^^m^^'^ '""^'■y^^ 



Apiary of Coggshall & Weeks. Delta. Delta County. 



