#1 is the actual package being built, #2 is the mods to the recipes for the image I am building...

    (1)    ./workspace_1/poky/../meta-intel

    (2)    ./workspace_1/poky/../meta-1/meta-2/meta-intel
These directories share the same name, but the local.conf for #2 requires a unique BBFILE_COLLECTIONS name now ?

If I change the BBFILE_COLLECTIONS name to be unique,  I see the following error:

--- Starting bitbake server pid 12022 at 2020-11-02 07:19:06.133802 ---
ERROR: Unable to parse Var <AVAILABLE_LICENSES[:=]>
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "Var <AVAILABLE_LICENSES[:=]>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/disk0/scratch/smonsees/yocto/workspace_3/poky/meta/classes/license.bbclass", line 275, in available_licenses(d=<bb.data_smart.DataSmart object at 0x7fc921cbdda0>):
         for lic_dir in lic_dirs:
    >        licenses += os.listdir(lic_dir)
    
bb.data_smart.ExpansionError: Failure expanding variable AVAILABLE_LICENSES[:=], expression was ${@' '.join(available_licenses(d))} which triggered exception FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/disk0/scratch/smonsees/yocto/workspace_3/poky/../meta-bae/meta-limws/meta-intel/custom-licenses'