This Dog’s Nose Saves Bees
There was a beekeeper’s day at Tocal Agriculture College on Australia’s east coast on Saturday that I attended. One of the presentations was from a husband and wife team who are training a dog as an AFB sniffer dog.
The husband was once a military dog handler, more for security than sniffer detection, but he’s now a civilian. They keep hives as a second business. When they decided to get a dog as a family pet he investigated training a suitable dog for AFB detection.
Missy is a Belgian Malinois and is ten months old. She comes from a line of military detection dogs and her sire has an award as the top military service dog in Australia.
They had a presentation of how the training goes for a detection dog, which was fascinating in its own right. Then they assembled some hives on stage, one with a culture of AFB in it. The dog was given the instruction to search and she raced along the line of hives and picked it right off. They distracted the dog and moved the hives around, and once again she found it immediately.
One thing that was very clear was that if you want to hold your audience all the way to lunch time, put on a dog presentation right before the break. Missy was very popular with the crowd.
Ironically, I just searched for Missy the Belgian Malinois and a Youtube video popped up, same name and breed but not the same dog.
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Great story, Kim. I really enjoyed reading that. 
Agree, with Dawn. Should be more of it I reckon.
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