Sniffing Out Bumblebees in Britain

I think I have found a great new job for Sam as a bumblebee sniffing dog! That's right. In England, at Stirling University to be exact, Toby, the world's first bumblebee sniffing spaniel has been trained to sniff out bumblebee nests so that scientists can determine why the bumblebees in Britain are dying.

According to the Guardian, there used to be at least 25 different species of bumblebees in the UK. Three are currently extinct and seven are close behind. Destruction of their habitats seems to be the leading cause with global warming close behind. With more intensive farming going on in Britain there are fewer open fields and meadows in which bumblebees thrive.

"If we are going to conserve them, we need to know more about them, where they live, what causes the nests to die," says Professor Dave Goulson. "The last few years have been really bad for bumblebees. We think it's probably the weather, but we don't know. We need to know how many nests there are. We need to find the nests to know how many nests there are. We need to find the nests to know how long they live and what destroys them."

The idea for a bee-sniffing dog came to the professors at Stirling when they realized that badgers, which are the bees main predators, sniff out the underground nests. They figured if badgers could do it, so could hunting dogs. Toby is a rescue dog with a new lease on life and a very important job. "Bumblebees are very important to the environment as pollinators of crops and flowers," says Goulson. If bumblebees continue to decline, there could be catastrophic ripple effects all along the food chain.

No word on whether or not Toby has ever been stung or how they trained him to sniff out the remnants of bees nests, but I'm holding out hope that Sammy could be trained for a similar endeavor!