A dog is to help researchers studying the decline of the bumblebee by sniffing out the insects in the wild.

Toby, a three-year-old Springer spaniel, can find the bees' nests, hidden in dense undergrowth or in the ground, using only his nose.

Experts at the University of Stirling said that studying the threatened bees is made much harder because of the difficulty in tracking them down.

The three-year project involving Toby is the first of its kind.

Prof Dave Goulson, who will oversee the work of Toby, said that his involvement would give a huge boost to conservation efforts.

He said that of the UK's 25 variety of bumblebee, three had become extinct and several others were in danger of going the same way because researchers knew very little about how they lived and what was destroying them.

Nasal talents

Prof Goulson said: "The real obstacle to studying bumblebees is that we can't find the nests.

"They have only about 50 workers and maybe 100 in the bumblebee nest so there isn't a lot of traffic going in and out. You can imagine that occasionally seeing a bee flying out of a clump of grass is pretty hard to spot."

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