Book overview
When an overworked beehive inspector seeks a detection dog to protect bees from a deadly disease, she teams up with a lonely dog who needs a loving home and a purpose.
Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selection
★"High-stakes and wholly unique, this true story highlights the environmental value of bees in addition to celebrating the bond between dog and owner." - School Library Journal, starred review
Cybil Preston needs a dog. But not just any dog. She needs a dog to help her with her work. Cybil is a beehive inspector who works to ensure the health of commercial beehives in Maryland. Hundreds of hives are shipped across the country as farmers need bees to pollinate their crops. Without the bees, there wouldn't be foods like apples, almonds, and strawberries.
But the bees must be healthy to be shipped, and there's a deadly disease, foulbrood, that is highly contagious. If even one infected hive left the state, entire bee populations could be wiped out. Dogs, with their ultrasensitive sense of smell, can sniff out even the tiniest scent of foulbrood in a hive. A well-trained, focused detection dog can inspect 50 hives in 10 minutes. Work that would take Cybil an entire day to do.
When Cybil meets Mack, an unruly and lonely dog, she wonders if she has found her canine colleague. Can rambunctious Mack be trained to meet this important challenge? Readers of all ages will enjoy this warmly illustrated true story of Cybil and Mack as they work to save the bees.