Seven of twenty hives sampled on August 5, 2009 were positive for LSV1 and an additional five hives in the time-course, from July (SD) and January/February (CA) were found to be positive for LSV1, all with greater than 95% nucleotide identity. LSV2 was more prevalent and was detected by PCR in 30 of 197 time-course samples from all three geographic regions. LSV2 incidence surged in April, July and January during which over a third of all 20 monitor hives were infected. Strain specific qPCR demonstrated high abundance ($2610 6 copies per 100 ng RNA) of both LSV strains in our monitor colonies throughout the majority of the time-course ( Figure 4 ). LSV1 copy number peaked in July, at 1.39610 8 copies per 100 ng of RNA sample (approximately 7.0610 10 copies per bee). Notably, LSV2 was the most abundant virus detected in this study (,10 11 copies per bee). Copy number peaked in both April and January, at 7.22610 8 copies per 100 ng of RNA sample (approximately 3.61610 11 copies per bee) and 1.42610 9 copies per 100 ng of RNA sample (approximately 7.1610 11 copies per bee), respectively.