# The Results Are In - Link: https://thermahive.net/2026/09/19/the-results-are-in/ - Published: 2026-09-19T05:30:00-04:00 - Author: Alexis Boback | | ThermaHive • 2026 Season Recap • Field Results | | | | 2026 Season Recap The Results _Are In._ Four apiaries. Twenty colonies. Sixty-nine treatments. Here’s what a full season of chemical-free heat treatment looked like in the field, and what three independent testers saw in their own backyards. | | | | ThermaHive | 2026 Season Results | | | “Well, that’s the only treatment they’ve had this season so I’ll vote for it.” Storm, our research apiary’s beekeeper Hello from the ThermaHive team, and first, an apology: it’s been a while since you’ve heard from us, and we’re sorry for going quiet. Here’s a recap of what we’ve been up to: ![Talking ThermaHive at the NorCal Bee Expo](https://i0.wp.com/thermahive.net/wp- content/uploads/2026/09/IMG_5115-e1789750815915.jpg?w=220&ssl=1) * •  Collected and analyzed this season’s results * •  Spoke at the NorCal Bee Expo on September 5th * •  Put V2 through 339 hours of testing for the most even heat distribution possible, for our customers and for Randy Oliver * •  Met with our parts manufacturers to add safety features and bring costs down * •  Prepared our talk for the DCB Alliance meeting on September 16th   If you missed us at either talk, catch us next at the Maryland State Beekeeping Association meeting on November 14th, or find our booth at NAHBE 2027 in Louisville, KY, from January 7th to 9th, 2027. Now, on to the results. The 2026 season is in the books, and it’s the strongest set of numbers we’ve recorded yet. To be fair though, they’re the only numbers we’ve recorded so far, but they’re still worth sharing. This recap covers our own research apiaries, along with results from three independent testers who ran ThermaHive in their own yards this year, in North Carolina, New Jersey, and Georgia. Their results are their own, gathered under real-world conditions we don’t control, which is exactly why they matter. | | A quick note on how we’re reporting this: a number of our early-season runs ran into hardware or firmware issues that we’ve been fixing as we went, so later-season numbers tend to be cleaner than earlier ones. We’re not filtering those runs out of this recap. If anything below looks inconsistent, that’s usually why. ⌊ThermaHive research apiary⌉ | | Field Results Heat Works **Three out of every four treatments reduced mite load.** Across four apiaries and 20 colonies, we logged 69 treatments between April and September, and averaged across the whole season, a single ThermaHive treatment cut mite counts by **51 percent**, right in line with one strip of Formic Pro. | Avg. Reduction Per Treatment 51% 95% CI 31–65%, p = 0.002 | | Honey Harvested 250 lbs from 7 ThermaHive hives | 36 of 48 mite washes came back lower than they went in (p = 0.0004). Every one of those drops happened without a single miticide. | ⌊84 percent average mite reduction from season peak⌉ | | ⌊Zero ThermaHive-treated hives lost this season⌉ | | | Outside Verification The National Honey Bee Survey Paid Us a Visit On September 9, 2026, Storm and a surveyor from the National Honey Bee Survey (NHBS) came out to our research apiary and pulled frames from five of our ThermaHive-treated hives, alongside several of our chemical-control hives for comparison. (We left TH-4 and TH-5 out of sampling: both are carrying small colonies after queen issues earlier this season, unrelated to treatment, and we wanted to leave every bee they have in place for overwintering.) The result, by Storm’s own account, was one he’d never seen before in all his years of beekeeping: neither he nor the NHBS surveyor could find a single mite on the larvae pulled from any of the five ThermaHive-treated hives, to the naked eye. Finding one clean hive out of five happens now and then. Finding **all five** clean does not. ![Larvae sampled from a ThermaHive-treated hive during the NHBS visit](https://i0. wp.com/thermahive.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Larva.jpg?w=680&ssl=1) Larvae sampled from a ThermaHive-treated hive, September 9, 2026 It’s too early to draw firm conclusions. The samples are headed to the University of Maryland for full lab analysis, including virus screening and pollen evaluation, with results expected in November. But one hypothesis worth naming out loud: this pattern is consistent with mites in the hive being sterilized by treatment rather than simply killed off outright, unable to reproduce even where a few remained. If that holds up under lab analysis, it would be a meaningful finding beyond a straightforward mite-kill count. We’ll share the full University of Maryland results, virus screening included, the moment we have them, expected this November. | | By Comparison How ThermaHive Stacks Up We don’t expect anyone to take a single season’s numbers on faith, so here’s how our average per-treatment mite kill this year compares to common treatments beekeepers already use: our field data this season, alongside Randy Oliver’s published benchmarks for the rest. | •  **ThermaHive, 2026 season** | 45–53% | | •  Oxalic acid vapor, brood present | 30% | | •  Formic Pro, one strip | 50% | | •  Formic Pro, two strips | 80% | | •  Apiguard, two applications | 90% | | •  Amitraz strips | 95% | Heat lands right around one strip of Formic Pro, with none of the residue, none of the resistance risk building up in your mite population, and no waiting period before you can pull honey. We also ran our season’s numbers through [Randy Oliver’s Varroa Model](https://scientificbeekeeping.com/randys-varroa-model/), plugging in our treatment results to see how a ThermaHive-treated colony’s projected mite trajectory compares to an untreated or chemically-treated one across a full season. ![ThermaHive season results modeled in Randy Oliver's Varroa Model](https://i0.wp. com/thermahive.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/52_randy_style_treatment_comparison- 2.png?w=680&ssl=1) A caveat: our field data runs April 29 to September 2, 2026. Everything after that is the model’s projection, not something we measured, and it assumes no mite immigration. Our actual hives finished the season between zero and 4 percent. | | Every Hive, Every Month A Season Spent Under Threshold We tracked phoretic mite load in seven colonies from late April through early September. Five of them were under 2 percent by September 2nd. The other two spiked hard in August before settling back down to just under 4 percent by season’s end, and we know exactly why. In both hives, the queen had moved up into the honey super and started laying there. ThermaHive’s heater treats the brood box, not the supers, so that batch of brood went untreated and its mite counts climbed until it emerged. Once it did, both hives came back down on their own. It’s a good reminder that heat only works where it reaches, and it’s exactly the kind of edge case we’re designing around for next season. ⌊5 of 7 ThermaHive-treated hives under 2 percent by September 2, 2026⌉ ⌊West River research apiary mite wash timeline, 2026 season⌉ And so everyone knows we didn’t just get lucky, or that we’re somehow immune to varroa: we lost one of our control hives, B-1, to varroa this season. Coming into late August, B-1 had already been through three oxalic acid treatments. On August 24th, a mite wash came back at 150 mites per 240 bees, a load of roughly 62.5 percent. That same day, we treated with oxalic acid and thymol. By September 2nd, the colony had been slimed out by small hive beetle and had to be condensed. As of September 9th, B-1 had officially collapsed to varroa. ![B-1 colony slimed out by small hive beetle, September 2, 2026](https://i0.wp.com/ thermahive.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/IMG_4724.jpg?w=680&ssl=1) B-1, slimed out by small hive beetle, September 2, 2026 Every heat-treated colony in the same yard made it through the season. | | In The Field Results From Our Independent Testers ThermaHive doesn’t just get tested in our own apiaries. This season, three independent testers ran units in their own hives, under their own conditions, hundreds of miles apart from each other and from us. Here’s what they found. North Carolina: 71% Average Reduction, 23 Treatments Our tester in North Carolina ran more ThermaHive treatments than anyone else in the program this year: 23 logged between May and August, with results that held up statistically (p = 0.00005). On average, each treatment cut mite load by **71 percent**. His best single session brought one hive from 7.87 percent down to 0.26 percent, a 97 percent reduction. By season’s end, 9 of his 10 treated hives were under the 2 percent threshold, and 5 of those were at zero. | Avg. Reduction Per Treatment 71% across 23 treatments | | Best Single Session 97% 7.87% → 0.26% | Part of why his numbers stand out is how he ran his treatments. Rather than treating a hive once and waiting to see if it held, he came back and treated it again within a week or two, especially on his higher-count hives. Treatment pairs run 7 to 14 days apart netted a **75 percent** reduction on average, ahead of what a single treatment brought on its own (62 to 65 percent). It’s a simple change in approach, but it’s shaping up to be one of the bigger levers we have, and it’s the direction we’re steering our recommended protocol for next season: fewer single “treat and wait” applications, more short-interval, back-to-back ones. ![North Carolina tester, mite load by hive, 2026 season](https://i0.wp.com/thermahive. net/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/08_nathan_adams-e1789767818441.png?w=680&ssl=1) New Jersey: The Heaviest Load in the Program Our tester in New Jersey was working with the heaviest mite load recorded anywhere in the program this season. Her hardest hive tested at 21.00 percent in July. One ThermaHive treatment brought it down to 8.06 percent; a second, run eight days later, brought it to 4.6 percent. All four of her treatments reduced mite load, brood and queen were unchanged throughout, and she still pulled more than 70 pounds of honey. | Heaviest Hive, Before 21.00% recorded in July | | Heaviest Hive, After 4.6% after two treatments | ![New Jersey tester results, 2026 season](https://i0.wp.com/thermahive.net/wp-content/ uploads/2026/09/12_paula_bal-1-e1789767549704.png?w=680&ssl=1) Georgia: 75% Reduction in One Clean Run Our tester in Georgia had a rough start. A first attempt was cut short by a generator shutoff and the mite load actually rose. But a full 3-hour treatment at 112°F on August 26 brought his hive from 9.2 percent down to 2.3 percent within five days, a 75 percent reduction, landing just above the treatment threshold. | Before Treatment 9.2% mite load | | After Treatment 2.3% 5 days later, −75% | ![Georgia tester results, 2026 season](https://i0.wp.com/thermahive.net/wp-content/ uploads/2026/09/11_bob_lemcke-1-e1789767605187.png?w=680&ssl=1) Three testers, three states, three very different starting points, and the same result. Heat brought mite loads down. | | Coming Next We Sat Down With Randy Oliver While we were out in California this month, we got the chance to sit down with Randy Oliver on September 7th and walk him through ThermaHive in person. He’s agreed to test it himself in his own operation. More on that conversation, and on what he thinks, in our next update. | | One More Thank You Thank You, Storm None of this season happens without Storm. He gave us the bees to start with, taught us how to actually be beekeepers, and then spent the season patiently suffering through all 51 mite washes we put him through, 48 across our seven ThermaHive colonies and 3 more on the controls. We are endlessly grateful, and so are the bees. ![Daniel, Lexi, and Storm at the research apiary](https://i0.wp.com/thermahive.net/ wp-content/uploads/2026/09/IMG_4544-1-e1789750242276.jpg?w=680&ssl=1) Daniel, Lexi, and Storm | | ### Thank You To every tester who took a chance on an early, occasionally glitchy piece of hardware and stuck with us while we worked out the kinks: thank you. This season’s results are as much yours as ours. Thank you to the NorCal Bee Expo and the DC Beekeeping Alliance for having us out to talk about ThermaHive, to Randy Oliver for the chance to sit down with him and for agreeing to put ThermaHive through its paces himself, and to every one of you reading this for following along and for your support. 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