1844 C. Dickens Martin Chuzzlewit lii. 598 ‘Oh, vermin!’ said Mr. Pecksniff. ‘Oh, bloodsuckers!..vermin and swarmers.’

1872 J. G. Murphy Crit. Comm. Leviticus xi. 20 Winged creepers or swarmers are so called from their minuteness and their multitude.

1898 H. M. Ward in Ann. Bot. 12 301 The obvious suspicion arose that an intruding swarmer had got into my hanging-drop.

1900 Nature 21 June 191/1 The beetles are late swarmers, appearing chiefly in July.

1964 Bacteriol. Rev. XXVIII. 242/2 If the swarmer is to become a recognizable caulobacter cell, it must develop a stalk after cell division.

1855 Poultry Chron. 3 300/1 I have found hives in which the combs ranged in the way most common, from front to back, indifferently swarmers or non-swarmers.

1883 in Standard 15 Feb. 5/2 ‘Artificial swarmers’..have displaced the old fashioned ‘skep’.

1950 Biochimica et Biophysica Acta 5 41 A study was made of the flagellation of swarmer cells of Proteus vulgaris.

1976 Jrnl. Bacteriol. 128 456/1 The stalked cell [of Caulobacter crescentus] divides repeatedly to produce new swarmer cells, whereas the swarmer cell, which cannot divide, loses motility and develops into a stalked cell.

1740 G. Smith tr. Laboratory (rev. ed.) App. p. xxxiii Cases for Swarmers or Rockets.

1765 R. Jones New Treat. Artific. Fireworks iv. 149 Rockets which go under the denomination of swarmers, are those from two ounces downwards.