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.

2. (transitive) To deprive (a crowd, etc.) of habitation or shelter.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “unhive”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)