Divide and Treat
Lexikon
Divide and Treat, often abbreviated as TuB, is a biotechnical concept for varroa control recommended by bee institutes that combines late-summer colony management with a particularly effective treatment.
Divide and Treat, often abbreviated as TuB, is a biotechnical concept for varroa control recommended by bee institutes that combines late-summer colony management with a particularly effective treatment. In it, a colony is split box by box into two parts: a so-called flight swarm, which receives the honey supers and the sought-after queen of the original colony, and a brood nucleus, which receives all the brood boxes and rears a supersedure queen for itself from them.
Because of the split, the flight swarm is immediately broodless and, according to the Lower Saxony State Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety (LAVES), is sprayed with a three percent oxalic acid solution about two days after the split. The brood nucleus, on the other hand, takes longer: only once all the original brood has emerged after about twenty-one days is it broodless as well and can be treated, if necessary with a second treatment five to seven days later, should the mite infestation require it.
The great advantage of Divide and Treat is that both measures can be combined with the late-summer management that is due anyway: whoever sorts out old, dark combs in the same work step is practicing comb hygiene and varroa control at the same time. In addition, unlike with total brood removal, the queen remains in the colony throughout, which reduces the risk of a failed supersedure in the brood nucleus.
In practice, the method is occasionally confused with total brood removal, in which all the brood is transferred into a separate combined brood nucleus while the queen remains in the original colony. A common mistake with Divide and Treat is forgetting to check the brood nucleus for actual broodlessness before treatment, because only a truly broodless colony can be reliably freed of mites with acids.