They're only intelligent as a group, in a way we would not intuitively understand. You might as well point to brains and use them to prove the great intelligence of individual brain cells.
They already have advanced communication down pat. Dances, pheromones and hormones. It's not all that basic really.
As far s I know they don't use tools in any way. I suppose it is possible that they might become really intelligent, probably not individually but as a colonial entity. But I don't think it will ever happen. That sort of intelligence is entirely unnecessary, and there are so many more efficient and easily evolved characteristics than sapience for the purposes of survival. I'm no expert, But I suspect that being eusocial is an inhibiting factor on evolving intelligence like our own and those of other primates, cetaceans and birds. A large factor in evolving and developing intelligence is interacting with like individuals, being able to understand them and their needs as they understand you and your own. That is society and social development. But bees and the like have already achieved maximum efficiency (for the purposes of this discussion) in social interaction, purpose and sacrifice. As I say, they've even assigned all of their reproductive requirements to a role filled by one or a few individuals. Individual bees don't need to understand each other to get by, they only need to fulfil their own role and the tasks therein. Which they do autonomously, essentially biological machines. The colony itself is more befitting the term of organism than the individual bees. Going back to my previous analogy:
Unit: cell.
Collection of cells for particular function: tissue.
Collection of tissues for particular function: organ.
Collection of organs for particular function: system.
Collection of systems for being alive: organism.
Collection of organisms for whatever: colony.
I think the only way any intelligence will evolve is if multiple colonies have to start cooperating without becoming the same colony, in the way groups of social animals do. I don't expect this to ever happen, but predicting this stuff is a mug's game and evolution is brilliant at generating left-field surprises.
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