HESS J0632+057 is one of only two unidentified very-high-energy gamma-ray sources which appear to be point-like within experimental resolution .
It is possibly associated with the massive Be star MWC 148 and has been suggested to resemble known TeV binary systems like LS I +61 303 or LS 5039 .
HESS J0632+057 was observed by VERITAS for 31 hours in 2006 , 2008 and 2009 .
During these observations , no significant signal in gamma rays with energies above 1 TeV was detected from the direction of HESS J0632+057 .
A flux upper limit corresponding to 1.1 % of the flux of the Crab Nebula has been derived from the VERITAS data .
The non-detection by VERITAS excludes with a probability of 99.993 % that HESS J0632+057 is a steady gamma-ray emitter .
Contemporaneous X-ray observations with Swift XRT reveal a factor of 1.8 \pm 0.4 higher flux in the 1-10 keV range than earlier X-ray observations of HESS J0632+057 .
The variability in the gamma-ray and X-ray fluxes supports interpretation of the object as a gamma-ray emitting binary .