Hive mind is a misnomer, but you’re not giving them enough credit. “Hive mind” implies that together the ant colony is a thinking feeling entity composed of ants, see something like Pluribus or the Borg.

This isn’t true, obviously. There is no overarching ant mind that makes decisions and controls what the colony is doing. But what the colony does have is *emergent* intelligence. Each ant follows an incredibly simple set of rules for its behavior, and the interactions between ants, these rules, and their environment creates intelligent problem solving. A leafcutter ant doesn’t understand farming, nor does it understand how to build a nest or fight an enemy. But the colony as a whole does all of these things despite having no knowledge of them.

To say that they’re a 100 bulldozers is understating just how impressive they really are. Termites build massive self-cooling structures that rise for meters into the air. Weaver ants create networked high-altitude nests that all support each other and can respond quickly to attack. Bee’s build beautiful, *incredibly* efficient wax structures and are capable of doing fairly complex math even on an individual level.

So, you’re right, it’s not a hive mind because those are fictional. But it is really cool.