Interestingly enough. Queen bees do not actually control most hive activity. Individual workers and gatherers communicate through dance and pheromone signals and the hive literally votes on what it will do. For example a scout will find a new flower patch and tell the rest of the hive and the hive will vote on how many more bees to send.

It would have been far more interesting for the collective to have a queen but for part of the plot to be the humans misunderstanding her purpose to the collective, kill her, and then have the collective be just fine and produce a new queen.

Then it would literally be bees