From what I can tell, the entire hive is “the” organism, and individual bees are like cells in the body. There was an episode of Cosmos, where Neil deGrasse Tys

From what I can tell, the entire hive is “the” organism, and individual bees are like cells in the body. There was an episode of Cosmos, where Neil deGrasse Tyson described bees as the other of two major intelligences on Earth, and suggested their structure as a model for alien visitors[0]. If we judged ourselves by the cells in our body, we’d probably conclude that humans aren’t “happy.” White blood cells basically run suicide missions against intruders, so they are sort of like swarming worker bees. [0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ubE9hjrsHmI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ubE9hjrsHmI