"My neighbor and I went into a hive Tuesday and found the bees had not pulled comb near the bottom of the frames due to (we think having screened bottom boards)."
might be, i don't use sbb's but have read about a number of anomaly's using sbb's.
"We inverted the bottom two boxes in hopes the queen would move up and lay in this space. I got back into the hive today and found her in the bottom box with plenty of room to lay but I did not find eggs. I also looked in the top box and found the same thing. There was plenty of space for her to lay. I found capped brood and larva in various stages. I found two swarm cells with larva and might not should have but I tore them down. They were not capped. My question is will she stop laying right before she swarms? "
"Cells were at the bottom of the frames but only two and on different frames. She is a 2015 spring queen from a nuc and was doing a fine job two to three weeks ago. Like I said, plenty of brood just no eggs. "
first, just my HO, a 2015 spring queen is not going to be in swarm mode, worry about that next year. and yes, queens stop laying well before swarming.
second you reversed the boxes to find the queen had moved back down with plenty of space to lay in either box........for myself i think i would have removed the sbbs and left the boxes in place instead of reversing. two cells? i would have left them alone, but that's just me.
no eggs? but larvae? what's your weather been?
"I went back into this hive yesterday and the queen is again laying like crazy. I didn't find any additional queen cells. Not sure what happened."
could be one or a combination of a number of things; a young queen, weather, beekeeper manipulation, etc. think i would just leave them alone for a couple weeks then check back on what's going on?