Splitting, maybe

So today I took my double deep and split it into two 10 frame boxes. I took the upper brood box with the honey super on it and set it to the side on a new stand. I took the lower brood box and very carefully went through every single frame to try and find either queen cells or the queen. There was some capped brood. There was some larvae, food and pollen. Seven, almost eight frames, some new  foundation had been pulled out or was previously pulled out. I closed that box up.
I then went over to the upper brood box which only had a few frames of drawn out foundation and a couple of empty frames. This is also the brood box in which I have the two mid bar test frames.
I set that up as a new hive on a different base and again went through all of the frames.
I took one frame of food from the lower box and then I took the frame with brood and the start of a queen cell from the upper box and swapped them.
What am I thinking?
Since I didn't see the queen, but I know that she's active because there's larvae and brood in the upper chamber. I'm going to make the guess that that's where she is.
So, I took the queen cell frame which was only partially drawn-out out of that box, the light-blue box, and put it into the lower, whit brood box.
Now, they're both on individual stands. There is a completely capped honey super on the light blue brood box with low population.
Both hives are being fed 1:1 sugar water solution to encourage foundation being drawn out. I put the low population, light blue brood box, in the location of the old hive. I moved the white hive, the queenless one, with the queen cell, two feet to the right of it.
All the foragers are coming back to the new, light blue box. Look at the picture and you'll see that they are piling up out front, I think they're trying to decide if this is their home. The old hive has bees, many milling around on the landing board or creeping out through an air hole in the back, exploring. A few bees are coming back to it. Some of the bees on the landing board are taking orientation flights.

Check out the photos and you'll see what I mean.

The nuc you see in the foreground on the right has drawn comb but nothing else in it. I left it there in case some curious bees decide that that's where they will go if they swarm.
There is still a danger of a swarm because I could not locate the old queen to put her in the new box. I can only hope for the best.
There were quite a few drones around today so I am not concerned about a virgin queen getting mated. The season seems to be right.

Next steps:

Check next week, March 4 or 5, check to see if light blue box is queen right. Are there any queen cells anywhere?

Has white box pulled out the queen cell? Is it queen right?

Have either boxes swarmed?

Does either box have larvae?

Should I extract the super since the hives are being fed?

Check tomorrow and consider swapping location of boxes to ensure balance in number of bees. Today the high temperature was 79 and partly cloudy. The fog lingered to mid-morning. By night fall high pressure had settled in.Tonight will go down to 39. Tomorrow's high is expected to be 75 and sunny.

Hive check today

Took the hive--one medium honey super, and two brood boxes , the top brood box only partially built out --all the way down today.

The honey super was full of bees and had about a dozen hive beetles hiding under the traps. I added more traps (4) and refilled them with a mixture of vegetable oil and apple cider vinegar when I closed up the hive at the end of the check. 

It was a mild day, mostly sunny about 75 degrees, there was a light breeze, occasionally. The bees were very calm.

The center brood box had brood on two frames. They were working on building out more foundation. I have three new midbar frames in as a test. The bees have not yet started building wax out on them. That might be because they are in outer positions.

Before I opened the hive, I had considered reversing the positions of the brood boxes, if the top box was full and the bottom box had no larvae or capped brood in it.

The frames in top brood box had both, and food stores.There were also three very tiny, early queen cells.Two on the bottom of one frame, and one on another frame.

If each one of them has an egg in it, then they will each be capped by February 27th. Seven days later, on or about the 5th or 6th of March, a new queen will emerge. 

Next weekend, 2/26 or 27, I will need to check on those queen cells and make sure they are still good and safe as I do the split. I will also need to be sure the old queen is moved into the new split box. 

If I wait longer than next week the hive could swarm. On the other hand, the drones should begin in merging by next weekend. Below is the life cycle poster I'm working from to calculate this. Drones are sexually mature when they emerge, but need 7 to 10 days for orientation flight.

I checked the drone cells which begin appearing in the last two weeks. I did not see any purple-eyes, yet, it's too early. It takes 24 days from egg to emergence for a drone.

Next weekend will be the time to split. The upper box since it does not have all 10 frames built out,  could very well be put in a separate nuc box. There us good amounts of  food and brood in both boxes. And a lot of bees. 

The bottom box had brood, larvae and food stores in it. I did not check each frame for queen cells as I had seen the three small ones in the upper chamber.

If the weather remains warm, next weekend I will do this first split and see if I can't get them to build up.

They're bringing in a lot of pollen.