My time: 4:25, about a minute faster than average.
Theme: the humble bee, exemplified by the HIVE / MIND. Three long Across answers end in bee words: drone, queen, and worker. (Having the latter in the grid as its sadly undervalued human equivalent, ESSENTIAL WORKER is a little too on the nose, don't you think?)
For "journey" I put *TREK instead of TRIP, and that slowed me down a little.
I didn't know Cleveland is on the southern shore of Lake ERIE.
I really don't like clues such as "fifth most common family name in China" (CHEN). Are we really supposed to know that? It is interesting? If the answer to both of those questions is no, then the clue is not a very good one. Why not ask about a famous CHEN, such as the Han dynasty Empress?
The Black Eyed Peas is one of the worst bands in the world and their songs are certainly among the very stupidest. They have a 2010 hit called "IMMA Be." The lyrics include the title repeated 105 times. They are multimillionaires.
I like the abstruse word OCULI ("circular windows") in the grid.
This was a solid Monday! Nice cohesive theme with a capper and some fun fill, including PEER GROUP, QUAID, and PRISM. On the other hand, two answers include the indefinite article, A SIGN and A FUSS (and they both are clued with blanks, ugh).
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