hives, some lumber, and a beginner's outfit formed the stock on 

 hand. Interest in the work ahead, determination to stay with the 

 business and the most powerful incentive in the world to back up 

 the enterprise was to compensate for the total lack of learning or 

 experience in bee matters. Eight years of service in a large hard- 

 Tvare house under a tireless and exacting employer had not, I soon 

 found, been for naught. Business is business — be it hardware or bees 

 or profession or anything else. Eight years of bee-keeping has not 

 brought all the success dreamed of in the start, but it has brought 

 health, has made possible the establishment of a home and a nice, 

 clean business; the fifty colonies in one yard have grown to some 



Apiary of R. T. Stinnett, Delta, Delta County, 



four hundred, in four yards; and there is no doubt that in more 

 competent hands the results would have been much better in many 

 ways. All things considered, I have never felt the least regret in 

 making Delta County my home or bee-keeping my business. 



The foregoing was written, not so much with any idea of mak- 

 ing known my small accomplishments, as to more forcibly impress 

 the reader with the fact that this is a honey -producing country ; for 

 it must be admitted that not in every country can a man start in the 

 bee business as a specialty without any knowledge of the work 

 before him and make it pay. 



Some time around the year 1898 a bee-keeper and his wife from 

 near Denver came into this county and purchased several hundred 



