Insects, Hive Minds, and Worldbuilding

Let's face it: If you see a giant bug in science fiction, there's a better than 99% chance it's part of a hive mind. (The only exception I can think of right now is Vernor Vinge's spiders, and they're arachnoids not insectoids).

And a better than 90% chance that it's "evil."

I think this might be because we have a slightly skewed perspective on insects. We perceive them as fitting into one end of an extreme. Either they're colony insects and hive minds, or they're solitary creatures who couldn't build a society.

So, I decided to do some quick research to see if this is true.

First of all, any search on "insect society," "insect social structure" or similar will pull up explanations of eusociality (hive minds). Oh dear.

In order to find what I'm looking for, I had to search for a specific technical term, "subsocial." Not exactly intuitive there.

This led me to a site which defined various levels of sociality in insects.

Solitary
Subsocial - provides some care to offspring
Communal - live together, but don't share care of offspring. Do communicate and tell each other where food is.
Quasi-social - live together and share child-rearing duties
Semi-social - live together, share child-rearing duties, and have some nonreproductive workers
Primitively eusocial - live together, share child-rearing duties, have nonreproductive workers, but don't have huge size differences.

Which, yeah. You could easily have a "communal" insect species that's intelligent, and they wouldn't be that different from us.

Scientists, though, all seem convinced it's a stage in evolution. Sigh.

Now, let's look at some examples. Here's an interesting one: Paper wasps.

Paper wasps live in nests, workers help build and defend the next and feed and care for the larvae...

...but the workers are all juveniles. Once they have enough food and are strong enough, off they go to breed. Kind of like a, well. Wolf pack. Or a human family.

So, yeah. Insects have all kinds of levels of gregariousness. I'm not saying I have a problem with hive minds, but I'd like to see some insectoids that aren't hive minds.

Just so I don't know instantly the second the multiple legs are mentioned what I'm dealing with.