First, its not like bees get to negotiate their salaries and seek employment elsewhere.

Secondly, at scale you have to consider large beekeeping operations or even small ones which all have…shareholders.

So either the co-op needs to take into consideration societal and personal needs (ie. crime, health, housing) or your comparison needs to be rooted in basic economics (ie. supply, demand, labor markets).

Which is what the OP meant by “monarchy or communism” because fundamentally bee societies are more akin to government than business.

BUT, lets ask the bees what they think. I’m sure they’d prefer modern Westernized human employment over a labor camp like existence ;)