I had a couple of minutes, so I thought I would post an update. Monday, Marc Stadiem came by to help inspect the problem hive. Here is what we saw:
-No queen. We could not find the queen even after checking three times each.
-Plenty of capped brood. A small amount (playing card size) of younger brood on one frame.
-The hive body I added 8 days prior had been approximately 60% drawn out. It contained all nectar and pollen, no eggs or brood.
-We found multiple capped swarm cells on the bottom of 3 frames.
-Marc said that I had too many bees to have missed a swarm.
-The timing was wrong for me to have rolled the queen when I was in there 8 days prior based on the small amount of young brood.
-Considering the new wax that had been drawn, the queen had no excuse for not laying.
The lack of queen was very puzzling for Marc and myself. I do remember seeing one supersedure cell (which had previously been capped) that was being torn down. Maybe a queen hatched, killed the old queen and never made it back from a mating flight?
We split the hive three ways. Each nuc got a frame with swarm cells, a frame of young brood from my good hive, and a frame of food. Marc's biggest concern was whether the 5 frame nucs had enough food for the mid term, until the bees age into foraging, so I put on entrance feeders yesterday as soon as they were delivered.
This hive has been frustrating from the very beginning, so I am hoping that making the splits were enough to whip it (them) back into shape.
The good hive is still doing great. The queen had 6 of the 8 frames of the second super laid on Monday, one week after adding empty foundation. The outer two were all nectar, and were nearly drawn out. We stole frames for the splits, so I replaced them with foundation. I went back in yesterday, and they were 90% drawn, and largely laid. I added the third super, and plan to check it again next Friday.
A very good number of bees take orientation flights every day around 4:00pm. That is always really fun to watch.
This has been a very interesting four weeks of beekeeping.