[f. SWARM v.1 + -ING1.] The action of SWARM v.1
1. The action of assembling in a swarm or dense crowd; spec. the gathering and departure from the hive of a swarm of bees; also transf. of persons (usually with off).
1550. Bale, Engl. Votaries, II. 77 b. A myddle swarmynge of Antichristes sectes in England.
1573. Tusser, Husb. (1878), 110. Watch bees in May, for swarming away.
1661. J. Childrey, Brit. Baconica, 26. The chief time of the swarming (as one would say) of Pilchards about the shores of Cornwall, is from July to November.
1675. Gedde, New Discov. Bee-houses, 16. When Bees are at the Swarming.
1707. Mortimer, Husb. (1721), I. 271. Observe what you can of the usual Signs that precede their Swarming.
1817. Kirby & Sp., Entomol., xix. (1818), II. 167. Sometimes, when every thing seems to prognosticate swarming, a cloud passing over the sun calms the agitation.
1911. J. H. Rose, W. Pitt, vii. 168. The divisions, by the process of swarming-off, rapidly extended the organisation.
2. Biol. The movement characteristic of swarm-spores; reproduction by swarm-spores.
1867. Chambers’s Encycl., IX. 234/2.
1875. Bennett & Dyer, trans. Sachs’s Bot., 673. The swarming of zoospores.
1882. Vines, trans. Sachs’s Bot., 4, note. The term ‘swarming’ is applied to any apparently spontaneous motion imparted to a naked protoplasmic body by vibratile cilia.
3. attrib., as swarming-place, season, time.
Used spec. in names of apparatus for transferring a swarm of bees to a new hive, as swarming-bag, -basket, -box, -hook (in recent Dicts.).
1707. Mortimer, Husb. (1721), I. 270. In Swarming time the Hives that you are minded to use, rub with sweet Herbs.
1855. Poultry Chron., III. 206/2. Watching and hiving for several weeks in the swarming season.
1892. Zangwill, Childr. Ghetto, I. 3. At last it [sc. the Ghetto] becomes only a swarming-place for the poor and the ignorant.
