It might not be that they are more aggressive, it's probably your population size, now you have allot more bees then when you started in spring.
Take your smoker and smoke a bit under the lid / hive cover, pry it up with hive tool only about a inch, a minute or so again and take cover off,
bees will go down with smoke, lay newspaper over, no tape, then place weak hive over it.
Italians are on the hot side, most of my new queens have used are Carniolians, they are allot better to handle.

Konrad

Thank you Konrad. I'll go real slow when removing the top. I'm going to re-queen in the spring with Russians or Carniolans.

I've moved the hives about 200 feet away from their original site yesterday morning and was going to unite them then but they became very excited so I've postponed uniting them for a day or two. In the meantime, they've been back to visit their original sites during the day but went back to their hives last night. This morning, however, the site that contained the strong hive has what looks like a swarm ball above its original site. I'm hoping they'll go back to their hive again tonight otherwise, I have a swarm to contend with. The swarm size is probably one third of the hive. Does moving a hive upset them enough to swarm? I didn't see any queen cells but I didn't check every frame. I did see lots of brood so I think their queen is still OK.

Thank you,
Janet

Good,
I don't think moving them caused them to swarm, ...what was the reason to move, I would think a little late in season
to move, moving does stress them a little and they have to re-orient themselves again.

Konrad