You have to love dogs with jobs. Rescue dogs and shop dogs are always great, but this dog has taken it to an all-new level and is working as a beekeeper, mask and all.
Dogs have a few key traits that make them great companions to their human workers. The first is their loyalty to humans and willingness to help out, but a close second is their noses. Rescue dogs sniff out lost people, and I’ve even seen truffle dogs.
But Maple, an English Springer Spaniel, is a dog with a job as a beekeeper. She uses her keen sense of smell to seek out American foulbrood. This spore-forming bacterium is highly contagious and fatal to honeybee larvae.
The dog, sporting her beekeeper outfit, moves from hive to hive, giving them a good sniff and searching for the bacterium. This is a process that is highly necessary, and takes the dogs’ human counterparts days to look through the hundreds of hives.
However, for Maple, it’s a breeze. A quick sniff to check is all it takes. With her help, the accuracy and speed of clearing out infected colonies take a fraction of the time.
Snitch Turned Beekeeper
Beekeeper dog Maple spent her younger years working as a police K-9 unit. Originally, her eagerness to work with humans paired with her keen nose had her working to hunt down missing people. However, it’s a tough job, and she sustained an injury.
Rather than retire her completely, she was retrained to sniff out bacteria rather than perps. Now, she is spending her twilight days as a beekeeper sniffer dog. She is doing her bit to save the pollination process across the globe.
Declining bee numbers around the world are a serious threat to human food. The pollination that bees provide is essential for 35% of the world’s supply. Without the fuzzy little workers, plants and flowers around the world would suffer in unimaginable ways.
But, thankfully, we have beekeeper dog Maple and her fellow colleague canines looking out for us. You could do your bit too, by planting wildflowers wherever you see empty patches of ground.