Two hives still lagging

Well, the slow start seems to be picking up finally. We have three hives that are doing quite well. These are all hives that came from packages or a split. The newest hive in the original yard is growing very rapidly. It took them a mere few weeks to fill the second hive body and now we have been able to add a honey super.
The first hive at the Dolores location also has a honey super on it, but the bees have been reluctant to start using it. I drilled a hole into the front of the super to give the foragers an entrance above the queen excluder and hope that that will make it easier for them to start storing the nectar up there.
The second hive at that location is also growing rapidly, but not quite so rapidly as the one at the Chatanooga address. I have just added the second hive body to that hive -- perhaps a week or two later than I should have. Hopefully they will catch up quickly.
Unfortunately the most recent hive, which we started from a swarm and have already given a new queen is still very slow. The population is so small. The queen is still present, we have seen her milling about and she is laying eggs. However it is as though they just are not able to get the critical mass of population they need to start thriving. We took a frame each from the two hives at the Dolores Park location and added them to the poor hive to see if the newly hatched bees would give the hive a boost. We need to check soon to see if it has worked.
Finally, our initial hive is also lagging. There continue to be a lot of dead bees around the entrance again. At first we thought it was the mites that were causing this, but after the mites had cleared up and the colony seemed to have bounced back, the population has dwindled a little again. There are eggs present and some capped brood. We added a frame of brood from the new hive at that location which is doing very well and again will see if that population boost helps the situation.
There are a number of diseases which can affect bees, aside from the mites which we treat with powdered sugar. Most of these diseases have distinctive characteristics like dead brood, strong smells, etc. But there are a couple which don't exhibit strong symptoms other than a general population decline. I am beginning to suspect nosema, which is a digestive disease of bees. It would explain the dead bees we find and the fact that the population remains small. We don't want to medicate so we will continue to watch and see what happens. Often, once there is substantial nectar available the disease will abate. We also gave them a patty of mint treated shortening and powdered sugar, which is a treatement for tracheal mites in case that is the problem. But in the case of tracheal mites, you will see the bees showing signs of fatigue or listlessness. Our bees appear perfectly healthy, except of course that they don't seem to be building the population.

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