unhive

English

Etymology

From un- +‎ hive.

Verb

unhive (third-person singular simple present unhives, present participle unhiving, simple past and past participle unhived)

1. (transitive) To drive or remove (bees) from a hive.
   • 1727, [Daniel Defoe], “Of such Tradesmen who by the Necessary Consequences of Their Business are Oblig’d to be Accessary to the Propagation of Vice, and the Encrease of the Wickedness of the Times, and that All the Immorality of the Age is Not Occasion’d by the Ale-houses and the Taverns”, in The Compleat English Tradesman. […], volume II, London: […] Charles Rivington […], →OCLC, part II, pages 163–163:

     [T]he Mercers encreaſing prodigiouſly vvent back into the City; there like Bees unhiv'd they hover about a vvhile, not knovving vvhere to fix; but at laſt, as if they vvould come back to the old Hive in Pater-noſter Rovv, but could not be admitted, the ſvvarm ſettled on Lu[d]gate-hill.

     An adjective use.

   • 1867, James Bass Mullinger, Cambridge Characteristics in the Seventeenth Century, page 179:

     and unhived those numerous swarms of labouring bees which used to drop honey-dews over all this kingdom, to place in their room swarms of senseless drones.

   • 1882, Robert Browning, Dramatic Idyls, page 66:

     His broad hands smoothed her head, as fain to brush it free From fancies, swarms that stung like bees unhived.

2. (archaic, transitive) To expel (a crowd, etc.) of habitation or shelter; to disband.
   • 1677, Lancelot Addison, A Modest Plea for the Clergy, page 98:

     But if there be any who are herin delinquent; it were more justice and generosity to give a Catalogue of such Drones to those who have an undoubted Power to make them Labour, or Unhive them: And that the Righteous be not as the Wicked.

   • 1814, Walter Scott, A Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts, page 400:

     We need no more, one age will discover the effects; the people insensibly file northwards, where they intrench themselves in the mud; the ocean is debarred her wantering, the hollow land made frim, the lakes drained; the loose sand becomes a stable foundation for great emporiums; the ancient cities of Flanders, Brabant, and Arois unhive themselves into the new ones of Holland, Zealand, and West Friesland; and, in a word, the younger colonies (notwithstanding the disadvantages of nature) yielding an asylum to liberty, shall equal and far exceed what the former ever were.

   • 1883, The Roxburghe Ballads - Volume 2, Part 1, page 246:

     We conquering Ensigns to Rome might extend, If each man was faithful and true to his friend; There to unhive the old Pope and his Crew, And lead them in Triumph New London to view :

   • 2023, Nomentino, Nuova Italia, page 203:

     Here Harlotry unhives her swarms Of puffed and painted faces, Parading their half-faded charms With meretricious graces.

3. To break apart; to disrupt.
   • 2015, Jonathan Bayliss, Prologos:

     It would have been a continual hell of time-consuming impugnable argument, bringing on the kind of conjugal weather that closesup the rose and unhives the family for lack of any honey whatsoever.

   • 2016, Eric Lunde, The Book of Accidents, page 102:

     You can't unsocialize your self, and you can't unhive yourself. We are merely a goal-less hive, a hive without purpose other than sustenance.

   • 2019, Sean McFate, Goliath:

     The Russian general staff is said to have a hive mind. "Unhive” it by sowing uncertainty, causing its officers to make bad decisions that can be exploited.