> I am in my second year of keeping two hives and have successfully carried
> them over the winter.  Both hives are going very strong and I go through
> the hives weekly to find the queen cells so they don't swarm.  I have
> notices that one of the hives is much more aggressive to my presence than
> the other hive.  They have stung me through the gloves several times and
> tend to swarm around me much more than the other hive.
 
The agressiveness of bees is largely genetic.
 
I had the same situation last year.  I had two hives next to each other and
both were equally productive.  One hive was quite easygoing (Buckfast), but the
other, allegedly a gentle Midnite hybrid, well I wonder if they sent me an
African Honeybee queen instead.  Pop the lid on those gals and you were in
trouble if you had any kinks in your armor.  Angry bees would just boil out of
that hive.  This hive would produce in real life the classic cartoon scene with
a cloud of bees streaming from the hive going after some unfortunate.  After
working them I had to wait around with my veil on for 1-2 hours while the cloud
of bees around my head dispersed.
 
Last fall both hives were somewhat weak so I combined them.  The mean hive
was too agressive for me to find (and kill) the queen so I just combined them
with the newspaper method and hoped.  Fortunately the "nice" queen seems to
have won, the hive is fairly good-tempered now.
 
-Mike