> Wheeler (1911) explicitly treated the social-insect colony as a "superorganism" with broad functional similarities to a multi-cellular organism.

This is a metaphor, rather than an analogy, but "bee hive as superorganism" is a poor metaphor, as the bees refute it by their observable actions.  They clearly do not obey any single central "brain", standard equipment on all mammals. 

Better to use a metaphor that more closely aligns with what we can see bees actually doing, and very much UNLIKE a single organism, a bee colony leverages it distinct LACK of any single point of command and control to its advantage.  No single organism is any good at being consciously doing so many divergent skilled tasks at so many different places at the same time.  A hive of bees does this all the time, and this is the sole reason for the success of the simple rules used by bees.  

Somehow, about 4 million people a day have get to work on time in NYC (USA).

Lots of things happen to impede that effort, traffic jams, traffic accidents, subway reroutes and delays, commuter train delays, all at random.  The situation is complex enough that there are multiple phone apps that try and make sense of it all in real-time, and two AM radio stations that broadcast traffic reports every 10 minutes.

Each individual will act independently, but most will take common cues from the electronic signs, the apps, and the radio stations.  The chaos sorts itself out, and for the most part, everyone gets to work on time every day, but retail stores as a general rule don't open until 10am, to allow their sales staffs to avoid the worst of the rush.

So, a beehive is much more like a large city than like a single living organism.  

This sort of autonomy has been used in "robot swarms" to advantage, where (again) one creates a large number of simple machines, each following consistent rules, which results in "emergent behaviors" that seem very "intelligent".   This still happens even when there is minor variation in how the rules are followed, and how the environmental clues are interpreted, as is the case for bees - there is wide variance in any one's bee's reaction to the same stimulus or scenario.  

They call them "Robot Swarms" because they do what it says on the box - they act like a swarm of individual insects.

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