I keep a 2" shim below my lowest box (poor woman's slatted-rack effect: added room for the bees but no slats to interfere with my mite drop counts), so I have a bit more space than most users.  But even then, my standard OAV practice involves kneeling down and using a flashlight to look into entrance to check for anything flammable that the wand might hit in each colony before starting.  I also use a rimless aluminum cookie sheet under the wand.  I have screened bottom boards and I got better propagation of the vapor upwards with the cookie sheet.

Once I tripped on ice when doing OAV and my foot yanked the cord of the wand downward enough to cause the pot (which was actively cooking at the time) to lift and bang into a plastic frame above, melting it, before I could extricate it. 

I always keep water at hand when OAVing, so I sprayed some in on the melted frame and reinspected with a strong light.   In the end, I decided to unstack the colony and examine the frame to make sure all was well, even though it was pretty cold that day. All was well, of course, but I would have fretted for hours if I had just left it as is.  Because I had never done the tests that you did, so thank you for doing that.

The main reason I never fail to wear a proper respirator is exactly this situation: where an unexpected event requires emergency removal of a hot and partly cooked load of OAV.  Aside from injury to my pride at such a pratfall, and a wicked bruise, there was no danger at all.  I would hate to be in a situation where the choice was protecting my own health vs. pulling the wand and a burning OAV load out into the open air.

I have my wand's stem marked so I can hit the exact center of the boxes easily, without guess work, every time.

Nancy

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