Attempting to setup a Productive Bees (v13.6.11) farm for resource collection within a Compact Machine (v7.0.22) on an ATM10 server (v2.36, no other performance mods on the server) results in inactivity of the bees despite chunkloading (through FTBChunks) the chunk containing the compact machine block. This occurs regardless of whether bees are simulated within a hive or free-roaming bees (i.e. waiting for amber bees to encase mobs). Hives are inactive without a player loaded within the machine nearby.

Forcing chunkloading from within the compact machine (in the compact machine dimension) does permit bees to become active in the absence of a player. This is not necessary for several other compact machines, containing within them crop farms (i.e. Ars soruceberries, Mystical Agriculature and vanilla Minecraft crops), and Sophisticated Storage barrels and controller connected to a Applied Energistics 2 storage interface through a quantum tunnel.

This appears to be specific and/or unique to the bees/hives. Crossposting this to the Productive Bees issue tracker as well.

JDKDigital/productive-bees#635

Compact Machines do not automatically chunkload, and have not chunkloaded since the rewrite in 1.16. The reason bees are working is because you loaded the room's chunks.