I really appreciate you sticking with the game and not giving up after having so much trouble in the early game!
I‘m honestly a little baffled that you didn‘t think to try to interact with the NPCs at all before leaving the hive, which reveals a blindspot of mine and I‘ll have to think about how I will approach this.
I‘m personally not a big fan of over-tutorialization and think that — especially in a game centered so much on exploration and freedom — overwhelming new players with too much detailed information runs the risk of annoying them so much and keeping them from the core loop so long that they‘ll lose interest. There‘s definitely a careful balance to be struck there.
Concerning the verisimilitude of speaking insects: I found it only fitting to give the „queen“ stereotypical fantasy royalty speeches . It’s quite funny to me to have her be the only one speaking in this manner, though I appreciate that it is personal taste.