I found the “we don’t pick apples” absurd.

It’s either pick apples or don’t pick up falling food either. Here’s why:

Fruit trees and other mass farmed plants have been selectively bred over thousands of years to bear fruit or seeds that are far larger than their wild variants. Picking fruit early from a commercial apple tree actually keeps the tree grow healthier because it isn’t putting as much of its resources into growing the fruit. In many cases with plants you break the flowers off before they go to seed so that the plant doesn’t waste its energy trying to grow seeds so that it can be larger and healthier next year.

So not picking fruit hurts the trees. Given the global unified mind, wheat production could be easily modified to cut slightly higher so that the grain is removed leaving the rest of the plant intact. Again this helps the plant because natural grasses don’t produce such large heads.

Alternatively, they shouldn’t take fallen apples because it’s interfering with the natural life cycle of the Apple tree. There’s a small chance an Apple tree will grow and eating that fallen Apple is taking food from wildlife that would eat it.

I don’t think the writers thought it out because they were looking for a reason to have the hive starve and be on a short timeline but not immediate death.