Come-Back in the Horse Breeding Business 
C HANGED CONDITIONS.—The draft horse is 
constantly demonstrating its rights and its 
efficiency as an economical agency for doing work 
on the farm and in helping the manufacturer dis¬ 
tribute Ids products. During the period of high 
prices, when costs were seldom considered, mer¬ 
chants turned to trucks to solve their daily problem 
of making prompt deliveries. In many instances 
delivery charges and costs were overlooked; the 
public was insistent upoQ immediate service, and 
did not balk when extravagant delivery costs were 
added. They had the money to spend and were not 
especially concerned as to whether the goods them- 
stIves or the service charges absorbed the expendi¬ 
ture. Nowadays the merchants and business con¬ 
cerns have had opportunity to calculate costs; in 
fact, a reduced volume of business has compelled 
most of them to stop and figure out exactly where 
expenses could be curtailed. Tn many cases horses 
have replaced trucks, especially in local delivery 
zones, where frequent stops and starts are involved. 
For long hauls on slippery macadam roads or streets 
the truck is indispensable, yet it is actually sur- 
season simply because the halt in building operations 
necessitated the termination of their field operations. 
Now there is a suspicion, at the yards, that the 
spurt in building construction will enable resump¬ 
tion of at least some work in the woods, and that, 
a call will be made for some heavy horses. 
RESTORING FERTILITY.—The South is gen¬ 
erally a buyer of work horses and mules, but every 
one knows the conditions in the cotton belt. In 
reality the wonder is that there has been any outlet 
at all for surplus horses, since so many channels 
have been closed entirely to the trade. It surely 
looks now as if the corn belt farmer would be amply 
paid for resuming draft horse breeding operations 
and that he will be more than justified in cutting 
down his corn areas and devoting additional fields 
to meadows and pastures. Such an arrangement 
would make it possible for the soil to regain its fer¬ 
tility and thus be enriched and ready to produce 
more coarse grains when the call comes for them 
through the agency of higher prices. 
FUTURE POSSIBILITIES.—The recent Inter¬ 
national Live Stock Exposition sounded the keynote. 
upon working a pair or two of real brood mares; if 
he will convert his surplus coarse grains into pork 
and beef, and insist upon satisfying the exacting 
demands of dairy cows and poultry for complete 
rations witli quality feeds of acknowledged useful¬ 
ness and value; if he will raise more colts and 
economize both in field crop acreage and its attend¬ 
ing labor, I can see no reason why lie would not be 
putting the skids under his future problems and 
thereby reduce bis disappointments to the minimum. 
The live stock industry made the corn belt: the corn 
crop enabled the stockman to prosper; prosperity 
prompted cozy homes, while congenial surroundings 
foster happy families. If agriculture beckons and 
you are a natural-born stockman, do not fail to 
join the ranks of the husbandman. f. c. m. 
The Work of the Honey Bee 
T HE Iowa Experiment Station has been studying 
the working capacity of bees. The following 
facts have been discovered: 
An intensive study of the trips made bv field bees 
gathering an abundant yield of nectar from white Sweet 
A String of Belgian Brood Mares Weighing One Ton Each. Fig. 9 
prising to note how the horse has regained old jobs 
from sheer efficiency and eeouomy. 
FACTORS FOR CONSIDERATION.—Two or 
three factors are worthy of consideration. The 
prices paid for horses are abnormally low: their 
actual cost to the merchant is very much less in 
proportion to prevailing prices on light trucks or 
medium-sized motor-driven vehicles. Then. too. 
maintenance costs for horses are much less. Feeds 
are plentiful, and their cost is ridiculously low. 
Teamsters are less expensive than mechanics, and 
with the unemployment situation so critical, it is 
not difficult to find experienced stablemen and 
drivers. Mechanics dislike very much to accept 
reductions in wages, and as long as they have some 
money they would rather play idle than to work 
for reduced pay. 
LUMBERING ACTIVITIES. — Under ordinary 
conditions about one load of horses in every four 
received at the stockyards is consigned to the woods, 
where they are employed in lumbering activities. 
During the past two years there has been absolutely 
no call from this channel for loggers. In fact, lum¬ 
bering interests have actually sold thousands of such 
horses, or else turned them out to forage for the 
Ii demonstrated anew that the live stock farmer had 
abiding faith in the live stock industry, and even 
low prices with their accompanying losses could not 
shake his confidence in feeding and breeding activi¬ 
ties. For the first time in the show’s history, cov¬ 
ering a period of 22 years, the grand champion 
Pert-heron stallion, the reserve grand champion and 
the junior champion were home-bred. Likewise, the 
grand champion Clydesdale female was a filly foal 
under six months of age! The junior and grand 
champion Pert-heron mare was a yearling filly of 
outstanding individuality. Again, the three tops in 
the Belgian mare classes were produced by an In¬ 
diana farmer from a single brood mare that works 
every day on his small corn belt farm. The Clydes¬ 
dale filly was a daughter of last year’s grand cham¬ 
pion mare, and was sold previous to the award for 
export to Scotland for $3,000. 
i to i.'n-.u ill trs i.i \ j. 
“ X Lit* -VIUCl IF 
stockman should be duly appreciative of bis opp< 
tunity and of his obligations. The differential I 
tween feed costs and finished product values wt 
never greater. This holds true with reference 
milk. pork, eggs, beef and butter. If the farn 
v.-ill take hold of his own plow handles, and ins 
clover revealed the fact that half of the bees under 
observation made 12 or less trips per dav. while the 
other half made between 12 and 24, and'the average 
for all was 13 trips. The longest period recorded for 
a round trip was three hours, but the average was about 
4"> minutes. Exactly half of the records showed less 
than 30 minutes spent in the field, while the average 
was 34 minutes. Over half the records showed less than 
five minutes spent in the hive between trips, although 
the average was 11 minutes. The average time of be¬ 
ginning work in the field was found to be about > a. m.. 
and the average time of quitting was shortly after t> 
p. m., making a 10-hour working dav. 
CARRYING CAPACITY OF BEES.—It was found 
that when carrying ripe honey, as in the case of robber 
bees, a bee can carry a load equivalent to more than 00 
por cent or its own weight. Bees taken from an issuing 
swarm were found to carry honey to the extent of 
three-fourths of iheir own weight, so that in determin¬ 
ing the number of bees in such a swarm, one should 
allow only 2.000 to the pound instead of 5,500, as is 
the case when the bees are empty. 
The weight of pollen loads carried by bees was found 
to vary with the source, ranging from 12 mg. for elm 
and corn up to 25 mg. for apples and 30 mg. for hard 
nia[de. Thus the maximum load of pollen was found 
to be about one-third of the weight of the bee and less 
thau half that of a maximum load of nectar. It appears 
that there must be a great difference in the specific 
gravity of various polleus. for the loads carried from 
corn appeared fully as large as those from apple or 
hard maple, bur they weighed only half as much. 
Some bees were found that carried both pollen and 
nectar on the same trip when working on certain kinds 
of honey plants. Some of these were Red. White and 
Sweet clovers, apple, dandelion, heartsease and goldenrod. 
