diff --git a/salt/manager/tools/sbin/soup b/salt/manager/tools/sbin/soup
index 4c0f989cd..72947de88 100755
--- a/salt/manager/tools/sbin/soup
+++ b/salt/manager/tools/sbin/soup
@@ -1773,7 +1773,7 @@ create_intermediate_upgrade_verification_script() {
 
         while [[ $retry_count -lt $retries ]]; do
             # keep stderr with variable for logging
-            heavynode_versions=$(salt -C 'G@role:so-heavynode' cmd.run 'so-elasticsearch-query / --retry 3 --retry-delay 10 | jq ".version.number"' shell=/bin/bash --out=json 2>&1)
+            heavynode_versions=$(salt -C 'G@role:so-heavynode' cmd.run 'so-elasticsearch-query / --retry 3 --retry-delay 10 | jq ".version.number"' shell=/bin/bash --out=json 2> /dev/null)
             local exit_status=$?
 
             # Check that all heavynodes returned good data