> Butyric anhydride does not react at all with oxygen at room
> temperature and when it reacts with water there is no 
> change in valence state.

Where is there a roomful of "room temperature" pure oxygen containing with
no water vapor? 
That would be a very scary room to be in, I'd be much more afraid of a spark
than the Butyric anhydride.
I doubt that such a room would have any utility in beekeeping.

> This [the odor] is simply an irrelevant red herring.  

On the contrary, the odor is the crux of the matter!

> The odor of butric anhydride is not expected 
> to be the same as the odor of butric acid.
> They are two entirely different chemicals 
> with each having its own odor.

But the admission that butyric anhydride has an odor at all clearly
contradicts the prior flatly-made statement:

> "Butyric acid is not one of the byproducts, 
> it is the only product of such hydrolysis."  

The odor has to come from somewhere, and chemistry is not magic, so if the
only reaction possible is hydrolysis, and the only product or byproduct
produced is butyric acid, then:

1) How is there ANY odor other than the odor of butyric acid? 
2) Why is the butyric anhydride used, rather than the butyric acid, if the
only product of hydrolysis is the acid?
3)  Is some of the butyric anhydride NOT reacting with the ubiquitous water
vapor in the atmosphere when exposed?  Why?
4)  How can one smell butyric anhydride in anything other than a
moisture-free atmosphere?
 
An odor tends to start as a "volatile organic compound" and VOCs tend to
have some carbons.  They have to come from somewhere, so if such flat
statements are going to be intoned as if they were absolutes, someone has to
explain to us where all those odiferous VOC vapors come from.  The strong
odor (the only reason beekeepers even care about this chemical)  should be
explainable in terms of the reaction of the butyric anhydride with the
ambient atmosphere, which certainly does always contain some percentage of
water, some oxygen, some nitrogen, and so on.

One does not need to bogged down in the details of chemistry to see that the
what is going on is more complex than described, as otherwise, the only odor
would be that of butyric acid, and the anhydride would never be used, as it
would provide no advantage in terms of being more "odiferous" over butyric
acid, it would simply be "freeze-dried butyric acid - just add water".

But 'splain it to us all - don't use "debating tactics" like dismissing a
reasonable question as a "red herring", answer the question.

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