If you just put a hopper clock in the same chunk as your bee hives, this will fix the issue until the bug is handled
Can confirm for
1.18-rc1
1.18-pre8
1.18-pre7
1.18-pre6
1.18-pre5
1.18-pre4
1.18-pre3
1.18-pre2
1.18-pre1
I made this tiny video showing how to reproduce this bug and some temporary solutions to it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2b3L2HzjyY
I hope this can confirm the issue
Feel free to include this in the issue. This would be amazing to have fixed.
This still seems to be a problem for 1.18-pre6. I really hope this is fixed before 1.18 releases. Having mobs despawn like this is extremely irritating. (I'm making a small video showcasing this bug report)
Bug still occurs on 1.18.1-pre1