"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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