Bug Swarm [Research ; Programming]

So for my level (and barrels) I want to do a large swarm of bugs that can slow down the player, when they're not exploding out of the barrel.

I've looked into these types of swarms before when it's something like a starling flock, but the bug swarms are much different. Many people think of locusts or bees when they think of a swarm of insects, so for research purposes I'll be using locusts as real-world reference and also showing videos/photos of them doing their swarming behavior.

I think I want this to be a GPU particle, with an orbiting module, a small ribbon data to imply the directions that the bugs are going, and also a small light emitter to somehow imply the glowyness of these bugs that are infesting my barrels/level.

I'm not sure how to work the texture into a blueprint of the swarms having the ability to push things around, but I can probably look up a few tutorials on it.