"So speaking of OA degradation is likely a red
herring "

Any chemical will degrade to something else if heated hot enough.  So the question with oxalic acid is how hot do you have to heat it and are there other chemicals in the hive it can react with at hive temps.  How hot is pretty obvious.  Pretty hot.  Sublimation happens at about 300 deg F and it survives that temp just fine.  A rule of thumb is a chemical reaction will take twice as long every time you decrease the temp by about 18 deg F.  So, for the sake of illustration lets just assume that at 300 deg during sublimation 5% degrades.  The time is pretty short, maybe 30 seconds at that temp.  So, using the rule of thumb at 282 it would take 1 minute to degrade 5%, at 264 two minutes, at 246 four minutes, at 228 eight minutes, etc.  By the time you get down to hive temps the times will be years to degrade any significant amount.  Those time doublings add up fast.  In truth I doubt if there is even 5% degradation at sublimation temps as I have sure never smelled any evidence of formic acid in sublimed oxalic acid in a nuc with frames of foundation and no bees.

We know that oxalic acid will store in a bottle at room temp for years.  I have a bottle that is over 25 years old and can not smell the faintest hint of formic acid when I open the bottle.  So, all in all I do not think it thermally degrades at all in the hive.  It  clearly does go away.  So where does it go?  I am sure some simply gets picked up on bees feet and leaves the hive with them when they forage and gets tracked onto the stuff they forage.  Some likely gets consumed by the bees and I am sure they can metabolize it just fine in small amounts.  After all, they consume some from natural sources such as nectar, so mom nature has long ago provided them with some way to dispose the stuff that is consumed.  Oxalic acid is reasonably soluble in water so any that comes in contact with either honey or pollen is going to get dissolved.  Part of that dissolved oxalic acid probably reacts with the sugars in either honey or stored pollen forming esters, so an analysis for free oxalic acid would not detect any "hidden" as the ester.  And a very small amount gets absorbed by mites and ends up in dead mites in the trash on the bottom of the hive where it eventually gets carried out of the hive.  A small amount might evaporate and some might fall directly to the bottom to accumulate in the trash.

Dick

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