One dog in Michigan hasn’t been content with merely belonging to the species famously known as man’s best friend. She has strived to be bees’ best friend, too.
Maple, a springer spaniel aged nine, is earning news headlines by helping Michigan State University (MSU) researchers identify bacteria that is harmful for bee colonies.
As both the Michigan news outlet WILX and the Associated Press told it in reports published on Monday, Maple landed the role after spending seven years detecting human remains for a sheriff’s office. She had to retire from the sheriff’s office after suffering an injury on the job – leaving her handler, Sue Stejskal, in search of something to keep Maple busy.
“She’s a very over-the-top, enthusiastic, sometimes hard-to-live with dog because of her energy level,” Stejskal, who has been training dogs for law enforcement and other uses for more than 25 years, said to the AP.
Fortunately for Stejskal, MSU professor Meghan Milbrath was seeking out tools to screen and diagnose diseases that sicken honeybees, which her lab studies. A veterinarian who had taken part in a training about honeybees later put Stejksal and Milbrath in touch.
Prof Meghan Milbrath of Michigan State University holds a frame covered in bees at the university’s Pollinator Performance Center. Photograph: Mike Householder/AP
And soon, the pair hatched a plan by which Stejskal taught Maple to apply her police canine detection methods in beehives to uncover American foulbrood – a bacterial disease that poses a deadly threat to honeybee larvae.
The work Maple has since done for MSU’s Pollinator Performance Center has been crucial, with bees and other pollinators in a years-long decline stemming from diseases, insecticides, a lack of a diverse food supply and climate change driven by human emissions of greenhouse gases.
“American foulbrood … harms … young developing bees, and when a hive gets infected, it actually basically leads to death,” Milbrath, an assistant professor in MSU’s entomology department, said to WILX.
The consequences for beekeepers can be devastating, costing them the loss of infected honey crops and requiring them to burn affected equipment. “Beekeepers … have had to burn tens of thousands of dollars of equipment due to this disease,” Milbrath said to WILX.
Maple carries out her duties in a distinctive, yellow protective suit. Her gear includes a veil for her head and four bootees worn on her paws to shield Maple in case she steps on a bee.
“If a dog is going to be in an active bee yard, they need to wear the same personal protective equipment as people do,” Stejskal, an MSU graduate, told the AP.
Maple wearing a protective suit at Michigan State University’s Pollinator Performance Center. Photograph: Mike Householder/AP
She said properly outfitting Maple has required “altering and testing” because one can’t simply go to a vendor like Amazon for the gear she needs, mainly because it isn’t sold with dogs in mind.
About 465 bee species are native to Michigan alone. Among the goals of training Maple to spot American foulbrood for the Pollinator Performance Center was to create a guidebook with which other dogs could be similarly taught, WILX noted.
Stejskal told the AP that the importance of Maple helping mitigate one risk confronting bees as much as possible was obvious. “It’s a cool project,” she said.
Yet, she added, there was another benefit to Maple’s new calling.
“I was over-the-moon excited because my dog would have joy in her life and would still be able to work,” Stejskal said.
The Associated Press contributed reporting