In this paper we develop a technique to extend any bound for the minimum distance of cyclic codes constructed from its defining sets (ds-bounds) to abelian (or multivariate) codes through the notion of $\mathbb{B}$-apparent distance. We use this technique to improve the searching for new bounds for the minimum distance of abelian codes. We also study conditions for an abelian code to verify that its $\mathbb{B}$-apparent distance reaches its (true) minimum distance. Then we construct some tables of such codes as an application