I have read about some daylilies that seem to do very well when first planted.But then after multiplying into many fans and being divided never seem to recover or at least take many years to recover. I recently read that digging them up and transplanting them to a new location may help some daylilies that seem to refuse to grow. Anyone have any first hand experience with this type of situation?

Plants by some hybridizers do appear sulkier than others.
Cutting the plant back when re-planting might help get the plant to focus on growing roots.

If a plant is that slow to recover, I don't want it in my program.
Maybe also check for crown/root rot?

So many factors go into why a plant fails to recover after division.....i.e., what kind of soil you have, what you added to the planting hole, what your weather conditions were like, what time of year you did the division, what sort of injuries the plant sustained when you divided it, pests that are present like voles and shrews who love the easy digging around new divisions, how often you watered the plant, etc. If the plant was healthy and growing well before it was divided, I would look at other factors. I find the best time to divide is 2 weeks after blooming when plants (after resting for those two weeks) go into a period of rapid growth and increase. But you can't do that in every climate. Some plants do hit the ground running faster than others....and that goes to plant vigor. After division, the plant has to establish again for the flower and scape height to look as registered again.

Well, from planting over 400+ new daylilies this year, and every single one of them was planted in the same compost/manure/peat soil mix, there are definitely plants that just take a bit to get going. I had a few plants put on foliage and even try to bloom with only being in the ground a few weeks. I had a few that I thought just straight up died, but a few weeks later new growth came marching from the ground.

And I even had a few that did, just straight up die. (lost 4 out of 400, I think I did OK)

Heat, water, fertilizer all come into play also. Everyone has a different method, but I did read a few research papers that indicated that best growth was seen when Hem's where planted in 1-1-1 manure. So I did mix a decent amount of dehydrated manure in with my other amendments., since my base soil is useless red clay.

Yep, every cultivar is different and will respond differently to being divided and also new ones I have acquired respond differently. There have been several times where I almost tossed out a new cultivar after 2 years because it just didn't seem to want to grow or do anything. I waited one more year and that really made a huge difference.

My Apricot Serenade was beautiful. I divided it in 2009 after having it for 2 years, for a trade. It just has never done as well since. I often wish I had never dug it up! I moved it this year to see if I could find a spot to make it happy. We will see what happens next year.

I have had plants do amazing after changing their location. And it's not like they were doing badly in their previous spot.

I think just like in our lives, sometimes moving things around makes all the difference.

I have not divided many daylilies yet, so I can't respond to that aspect. I did divide Primal Scream over Labor Day, but didn't change its location. I will plan to move it if it suffers next year though, because it was one of the plants I moved that did amazing after the change.

I often divide and move if a clump is doing badly. So far most of the moves have been successful. Some spectacularly so. My only failure was with Lunar Max but I suspect that was crown rot. It came as a bonus plant too. My garden soils are variable but mostly clay.