What is a swarm?
Bee Swarms mostly occur in the spring, rarely in the early fall and almost never in the last summer. A honey bee swarm can be described as a compact ball of bees, as small as a grapefruit (uncommon), to the size of a football (most common), to as large as a basketball (also uncommon). No nest materials will be seen or found. If you see a nest (hive) it is not a swarm. Swarms appear suddenly and will temporarily settle on a branch, bush or even objects like cars or hydrants while scout bees search for a permanent nest site. Swarms in the clustered stage are relatively gentle and the risks of stings are low.
Swarm: a group of people downloading and uploading files using Peer To Peer technology, of which BitTorrent is one example. With BitTorrent, a swarm is the total number of peers (seeds + leechers). The bigger the swarm, the faster a download will go, particularly if the swarm consists mainly of seeds. If a large swarm contains only leechers, then there may not be a full distributed copy of the torrent which is not so good.
