Hello When creating new IMAP folder with thunderbird and Dovecot configured with the std MBOX format dovecot create a file in mbox format and so it is not possible to create a subfolder of this folder.
If you ask to create a NEW subfolder of the form : TOTO/TATA Dovecot create a directory TOTO containing a mbox file TATA. Very useful :-) I suppose the "/" separator is parsed by dovecot then it creates a directory containing the mbox file. Am I right ?