> Even during a dearth, colony population replacement is not pointless, not least because the colony depends on each wave of brood emerging to act as the house and nurse bees for the next wave
There is a certain surplus strength usually from which people are
making their fall-splits? Also the aging plasticity of honey bees
helps mitigate that effect. Bees that don´t rear brood, live longer.
(Apparently especially especially caring for emerging brood rather
than open brood, which doesn´t yet make sense to me btw, so if you
anyone here can explain that to me, please do)
Also the varroa free released queens apparently go into overdrive
after the break.
I think whether this is applicable in the end depends on pollen
availability in your area. How empty/skinny are your bees at the end
of the honey flow and how rich and long is the pollen buffet in the
fall.

> Queen caging may render bees broodless for the purpose of increasing efficacy of treatment for Varroa, but not without expense(s) to the colony. Are those expenses necessary?
Every treatment has its pros and cons. If you can avoid two rounds of
formic with brood break and oxalic for example the trade-off can be
worth it.
The problem that artificial brood break concepts are trying to solve
here is that higher temps due to climate change make formic more
problematic.

In recent years a treatment plan called divide & treat has been
recommended as an alternative treatment plan for german beekeepers.
All brood is removed and treated with oxalic, the brood split treated
after it has become broodless 24 days later. The two resulting
colonies can be wintered as singles or reunited into doubles come
fall.
If wintered as singles, the old broodless split will at times be
weaker than the brood split but the reunited ones enter and come out
of winter generally much stronger than your average production colony.

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