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One box at a time onto a new floor, reassemble the hive "upside down" (boxes the right way up), QE in place on new stack, new box on old floor to take the flyers. Examine, despatch, requeen, reassemble.

A couple of pieces of angle steel or wood placed vertically up opposite corners with a ratchet strap around the hive and another under/over keeps them together well. I remember doing it but can't remember when & where! 🤔

A week ago I found QCs and saw the Q in one of my hives. I was going to do a standard A/S but inadvertently squashed the last (selected) QC. So I did something I'd been toying with anyway: put a new box with 2 frames of eggs & young brood on the floor, filled the rest with drawn comb and placed...

I think eggs are quite likely to fluoresce under UV which might make them easy to spot. I'll try it when I find the torch!

I have "monovision" uncorrected short sight in one eye (good for close up stuff) and a contact lens in the other for distance. The brain sorts it out & you are not aware which eye you are using at any given moment. I got my optician to make up reading glasses to correct both for fine close work...

Depending a bit on how you do the split you might let the queenless half raise a queen, then once you have 2 laying queens decide which you want, remove the other (kill, sell, give away, or make up a nuc) and unite.

Just checked mine and half are humming despite it raining all morning

Likely a queen present (assuming trying to sieve them hasn't removed her). I'd give it a while undisturbed and see if they calm down if you can.

If just one egg per cell I'd just leave them alone for a bit. Next time you inspect look for where the eggs are and whether the workers have elongated worker comb with a domed drone capping (sign of LW or drone-laying queen).

I did, I was really chuffed! - turned out to be a drone layer! 🤦🏼‍♂️

Was there just one egg in each cell and positioned right at the bottom? Laying workers often lay multiple in a cell and quite often on the sides.

A small torch helps too! I'm not as good a spotting eggs as I used to be (I wonder why? 🤔) but a torch helps especially in dark comb. Also much easier to see that there are eggs than to see there aren't! I keep meaning to try my UV torch but I've mislaid it.

Just wondering how you got on with the suit, I could do with something better than my very cheap one

They must be really old bees then! 😂

Ooh - where can I get one? 😁 Mine go for flying pigeons

I'm just thinking out loud here so take it all with a pinch of salt & check my thinking! If you have eggs then the queen has been there recently. However don't underestimate how busy a hive can look after swarming! As to the hive (is it your only one?), you could buy a couple of queens, then...

Though sounds like they need a new queen anyway!

Hmm, could you have missed a swarm and they are requeening? If so you should go through them and reduce to one cell, though I'm aware this is not a welcome prospect!

Is this the only time they have been defensive? If so maybe look for other reasons like end of a flow. Do you have any other hives of friendlier bees you could use to requeen them?

You could do a vertical split so it is still "one hive" and reunite once they have got over it.