Joanna McGlaughlin asked what to do with aggressive bees.

The answer is to re-queen, but I think that you are in the UK and it is
possibly a bit late to get hold of a decent queen now.  If you have to wait
until spring, you may find that the colony is quite docile before it builds
up (you said that it became increasingly aggressive - and bad bees are often
fairly quiet when the colony is smaller) - so it may not be a problem to
wait.  However, you do not want it producing drones in the spring as they
could mate with any new queens that your other colonies(assuming you have
more) may produce after swarming.

Do you have more colonies?  Are they good tempered?  If so, you have plenty
of options, e.g. you could kill the queen in the bad colony and unite it
with another - then split the resulting colony when it gets big enough.

Peter Edwards
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