Hello @Tony1, welcome to the Flow forum.
If your current brood box is completely full, you consider doing what is called a “split”. The only problem is that you are heading into winter, and splits are normally done in spring. Depending on your climate and nectar flow, you may be able to do one at this time of year, as @JeffH does in QLD, but I suspect that you are a good deal cooler. If you split, you are weakening the hive, and going into winter with a weak hive is not a good idea.
With all of that in mind, how would you do a simple split?
- Inspect the brood box and make sure that the hive is producing drones. Splitting the hive will make a new queen, and if there are drones in your hive, it is likely that there will be other drones in the neighborhood for her to mate with. If you don’t have drones, don’t split.
- Count how many frames of brood, honey and pollen are in the hive. Take out half of each type and put it into the new hive. I like to transfer the queen into the new hive too, to give it a good start. The old hive will have foragers returning to it, but the new hive will not get as many foragers for a couple of weeks. Keep the brood frames in the center, pollen frames next and honey on the outside. Fill any remaining space with frames of foundation, drawn comb or foundationless frames if you wish.
- Consider moving the new hive at least 3km away. That way, any foragers will not return to the old hive. After a month or so, you can move it back.
That is a very simple way to do a split, but there are lots of other ways. Here are two very good booklets with a lot of information and graphics on what to do. One of them is quite a large document, so you may need to be patient while it downloads: