Thinking of how to combine Randy's splitting method/OA treatment schedule while using a double screen board (Snelgrove board) for very small scale splitting.  Divvy up the queen, bees and brood as described, putting the queen in the bottom box.

However, treating the queenright section while leaving untreated bees overhead for nearly three weeks wouldn't be very effective. 

But replacing the usual #8 bee-proof screening with metal screening that has mesh small-enough to prevent mites from dropping through and on to the lower colony will fix the problem. (Or just stapling some screening on over the #8 screening on both sides of the  board. Tape the edges if you are a belt-and-suspenders sort of person.)  You could do an OAV of the bottom section right away, and then follow-up with treating the upper section when appropriate for the method of queen replacement being used. And all without the need to separate the two parts prematurely. 

That works for me. 

And you could make it work even if you have deployed the board to forestall an imminent swarm and thus the queen would start out in the upper box, with a couple of frames of open brood below. Careful attention to the open/capped brood issue at the point when the queen and two frames are swapped back down to the lower box (day 7 or 8) in exchange for the two frames with the freshly-capped emergency cells would still allow this to work out right.  Then you'd truly have an artificial swarm, as well as a new colony (if you wanted one), and both freshly relieved of their phoretic mite burden right on (differing) schedule(s). 

Pretty small beer for operations that split in a big way, but useful for those of us who make only one at a time. 

Nancy

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