wyrdhamster alright, so, to answer your questions in order.
1- A Host with an Essence of 1 is brand new, a Crawler or Gnawer that just hatched from an Azlu Crone's egg or crawled forth from a Rat King's nest. A Host ready to take a body is, as you say, probably around Essence 2-4. The example "weak" Host in the book is an Azlu of Essence 4. At any given time there's only one "true" Host shard amongst a Swarm, but their Essence is contained in the Swarm in its entirety. It's easier to mechanize it as a Swarm as opposed to dealing with the issue of hopping host body to host body.
2- If you're a little concerned about being unable to actually harm a Swarm Form Host (which, by the straight rules on Swarms, you can't if you're using conventional combat techniques) you might want to consider treating them as if they had the Unbreakable Dread Power. Unless the character gains an Exceptional Success then the Swarm only takes a single point of Bashing damage, while with an Exceptional Success they take damage normally. I also wouldn't enable a werewolf in Basu-Im to use Down and Dirty Combat to take down an entire Swarm. A nifty thing you can do to make Hosts more dangerous is have the entire Swarm grapple a target into submission. If they do that then they're safe from potential attack, and also have the potential to inflict more damage than the conventional Swarm Tilt damage. You could also have them devour a target for Essence, which could make even a small Swarm seriously dangerous, even to a werewolf.
3- If you really want to you could have the Hosts regain Essence as per the Bound in Mage 2E. So a point of Essence per point of Health, plus any Essence in the target's pool/Pattern, plus a point per dot of Primal Urge/Cohesion. I just used the werewolf rules on regaining Essence from eating flesh. Also, it's important to remember that they regain a point of Essence per attack that deals Aggravated Damage, regardless of how much damage is inflicted. If they eat slowly, reduce the damage inflicted per "bite", then they can get more Essence out of a target. In which case a Host would get a maximum of two Willpower per entire human (on average) to a maximum of three Willpower per entire human. Note that it's any source of Essence, however, including using a Locus or gaining Essence and/or maximum Essence from eating another Host Shard.
4- A Swarm Joining with a human would cause the Swarm to disappear... unless you choose for it not to. Part of the Swarm could remain outside the body, which is easy enough to model since a Host gains an Attribute dot per point of Maximum Essence, which also equates to an extra yard of radius to the Swarm. Just stop the Joining process at a particular point, which divides the Swarm into two pieces. One group is in a Hybrid, another is still a Swarm. This enables a single Host to divide itself, potentially between multiple bodies and/or multiple places. All they have to do is wait for themselves to heal back up if part of the Swarm is destroyed, which means that killing one, or even multiple, Hybrids might not even purge a single Nest.
I also rather like your example Beshilu. I think it's important to remember that the impact of Toxins using the Toxicity rules on Uratha has no bearing on, say, the Poisoned Tilt as imposed by the Toxic Bite Dread Power. Unless your characters use Gauru liberally, and have no problem with Death Rage, then the Grave Poisoned Tilt will eventually take its toll on them. Even with Gauru they'll have to leave it eventually, and Swarms are stupidly hard to kill. Eventually, the Swarm will win. Adding Natural Weapons on to that adds an extra point or two of Lethal Damage to the inherent damage of the Swarm, and this is still without actively rolling to direct the Swarm to attack with intent.
1- A Host with an Essence of 1 is brand new, a Crawler or Gnawer that just hatched from an Azlu Crone's egg or crawled forth from a Rat King's nest. A Host ready to take a body is, as you say, probably around Essence 2-4. The example "weak" Host in the book is an Azlu of Essence 4. At any given time there's only one "true" Host shard amongst a Swarm, but their Essence is contained in the Swarm in its entirety. It's easier to mechanize it as a Swarm as opposed to dealing with the issue of hopping host body to host body.
2- If you're a little concerned about being unable to actually harm a Swarm Form Host (which, by the straight rules on Swarms, you can't if you're using conventional combat techniques) you might want to consider treating them as if they had the Unbreakable Dread Power. Unless the character gains an Exceptional Success then the Swarm only takes a single point of Bashing damage, while with an Exceptional Success they take damage normally. I also wouldn't enable a werewolf in Basu-Im to use Down and Dirty Combat to take down an entire Swarm. A nifty thing you can do to make Hosts more dangerous is have the entire Swarm grapple a target into submission. If they do that then they're safe from potential attack, and also have the potential to inflict more damage than the conventional Swarm Tilt damage. You could also have them devour a target for Essence, which could make even a small Swarm seriously dangerous, even to a werewolf.
3- If you really want to you could have the Hosts regain Essence as per the Bound in Mage 2E. So a point of Essence per point of Health, plus any Essence in the target's pool/Pattern, plus a point per dot of Primal Urge/Cohesion. I just used the werewolf rules on regaining Essence from eating flesh. Also, it's important to remember that they regain a point of Essence per attack that deals Aggravated Damage, regardless of how much damage is inflicted. If they eat slowly, reduce the damage inflicted per "bite", then they can get more Essence out of a target. In which case a Host would get a maximum of two Willpower per entire human (on average) to a maximum of three Willpower per entire human. Note that it's any source of Essence, however, including using a Locus or gaining Essence and/or maximum Essence from eating another Host Shard.
4- A Swarm Joining with a human would cause the Swarm to disappear... unless you choose for it not to. Part of the Swarm could remain outside the body, which is easy enough to model since a Host gains an Attribute dot per point of Maximum Essence, which also equates to an extra yard of radius to the Swarm. Just stop the Joining process at a particular point, which divides the Swarm into two pieces. One group is in a Hybrid, another is still a Swarm. This enables a single Host to divide itself, potentially between multiple bodies and/or multiple places. All they have to do is wait for themselves to heal back up if part of the Swarm is destroyed, which means that killing one, or even multiple, Hybrids might not even purge a single Nest.
I also rather like your example Beshilu. I think it's important to remember that the impact of Toxins using the Toxicity rules on Uratha has no bearing on, say, the Poisoned Tilt as imposed by the Toxic Bite Dread Power. Unless your characters use Gauru liberally, and have no problem with Death Rage, then the Grave Poisoned Tilt will eventually take its toll on them. Even with Gauru they'll have to leave it eventually, and Swarms are stupidly hard to kill. Eventually, the Swarm will win. Adding Natural Weapons on to that adds an extra point or two of Lethal Damage to the inherent damage of the Swarm, and this is still without actively rolling to direct the Swarm to attack with intent.
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) - I would advise 
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