Use of a Sniffer Dog in the Detection of American Foulbrood in Beehives

This report describes the training and validation of a sniffer dog for detection of American foulbrood (AFB) in bee hives. AFB is the major endemic brood disease in Australia.
A detection method that is reliable and less labour-intensive than methodically scrutinising individual brood frames manually is desirable. The objective of this project was to develop a novel, quick and reliable way of detecting AFB that is user friendly and affordable.
The sniffer dog (Baz) was trained successfully and was able to detect as little as one infected cell in a hive.