Symptomatic Black Queen Cell Virus infection of drone brood in Hessian apiaries

The Black Queen Cell Virus (BQCV) can affect brood of the honey bee (Apis mellifera). In general queen cells are endangered showing dark coloured cell walls as typical symptoms. Worker- and dronebrood can be infected by BQCV but normally without clinical symptoms. This paper describes for the first time a symptomatic BQCV-infection of diseased drone brood found on two bee yards in Hessen/Germany in 2001. The drone larvae were seriously damaged and some of them were dead. Samples of the affected brood were tested for BQCV by the PCR detection method. A BQCV specific nucleic acid fragment was found. The PCR product were sequenced and aligned with the relevant GenBank entry. At the nucleic acid level as well as at the deduced protein level the isolate showed a high similarity with the south african isolate noted in GenBank.