"How are those hives (or that hive) doing now?"
We had 6 small bee-yards in the north east and the hives bringing in the
fungal spores were at the two worst sites. At one site 0 of four hives
survived the winter and at the other four of 6 hives survived the winter
but died the following summer. Forage in the area was pretty much
limited in one case to bogs and in the other to lowbush blueberry fields
so whether or not the fungal spores contributed to the bees going down
or not is hard to say. The spores in question were rust spores, must
likely collected from spruce.
I've had other hives in bogs for cloudberry pollination (early spring)
bringing in spores in pellets which were similar to those you describe,
ie small jet black pellets. These hives did fine. They were moved to
better pastures after the cloudberries had quite flowering though.
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