A friendly hive species (RAR!)

[Zor]

In this scenario one day there is a strange flash of Gamma Rays in the outer solar system. Shortly afterwards they detect a strange object accelerating to the solar system and then slowing down on a course that would bring it close to earth. After three days a craft enters earth orbit. It's about 600 meters long and mostly conical with a rounded rear end and a variety of projection along it's hull. It orbits the earth for a few days and then sends down a message to the planet surface in various languages on the planet which inform them that thy plan on sending down a landing party to the United Nations headquarters. Several shuttles launch from the craft and then touch down at about the same time about a day latter and are met by various officials.

What comes of each of those shuttles are six individuals. The creatures that came out looked fairly insect like. They have a head, a thorax and an abdomen. They have eight limbs (two arms and two legs), chitinous shells, a pair of horizontal mandible, three eyes and a small antenna. Four of those individuals are about 1.6 meters long and stand about 0.8 meters tall and are dressed in red trimmed blue clothes. Each of them also carries a small flat hexagonal device. The other two 2.2 meters long, 1 meter tall, more heavily built and and are armored while carrying what look like rifles optimized for their bodyplans, though said rifle and armor is also notable for having a copper and gold color with a set of glowing geometric patterns and they also carry what look like ornate medieval style warpicks.

The smaller beings (using a translator device) inform them that they are ambassadors and that they come in peace. They are explorers charting systems about 2,700 lightyears (or about 5 years travel time for their best exploration ships) away from their Homeworld. They have the admittedly rare honor of making first contact another sapient species in humanity and they offer us blueprints for high performance batteries and a basic shuttle-craft that can talk off from a runway with an 8 tonne payload, reach LEO and land no problem. Later the explain that humanity is something of a first: what they call "Benign Proliferators".

This species of explorers are Eusocial creatures (and for sake of simplicity I'll call them Hivers). Their species is organized into Hives of between 1,000 to 250,000 individuals at maturity and their species is divided into seven different castes: Artisans, Farmers, Soldiers, Nurses, Administrators, Drones and Queens (with the landing parties being composed of four Administrators and two Soldiers each). Hivers don't have a Hive Mind, but all individuals in these societies are born with a function in society and a deep rooted concern for the well being of the Hive. Their soldiers may need to learn how to use a gun, but they don't need training to know how to hold the line, be frugal and methodical or hold up under fire. Eusocial creatures have been dominant land creatures on the planet for about 70,000,000 years, though it took some time for sapient beings to emerge. Their recorded history goes back further than human history and is very complex does but sufficed to say that at first things were hive against hive (including Hives of Hivers against Hives of their equivalents of Neanderthals and Homo Erectuses), then hives began to form coalitions which became nations and eventually unified under one banner before developing hypderdrive around 500 years ago.

As they explored they found some planets with life, but while Life was fairly common only about one in ten earth-like planets had anything more complex than masses of algae clusters. Intelligent life was rarer still, though they did find a few worlds where intelligent life had existed but had died off. Most of the ones they had found were primitive. They made contact with three other Eusocial species that had begun to push into space. Two of which joined their union in due time while the other remained independent. They fought some limited wars with two of them (the one that remained independent and one of the ones that would eventually join them) but neither side had genocidal intent in said wars. The same could not be said about the first space faring Proliferator (A rough translation for their idea of Non-Eusocial creatures: the idea is that each individual constantly endeavors to make more offspring until their population crashes rather than a Hive than growing to a sustainable size given the available resources and sticking there) species they found. These critters they describe as being something like Rabbits (even though they looked more like meter tall furry octopii with chicken legs): fast breeding aggressive herbivores that had a tendency of running it's population headlong into Malthusian Crises. As such the societies which they developed were based around the idea that Life Was Cheap, resources was valuable and that those that were surplus needing be destroyed (preferably in obtaining resources for their overlords) with subsistence slavery being something that the average whelp in this society aspired to since chattel at the very least has enough worth for preservation. They launched a set of brutal wars invading planets with waves after waves of disposable conscripts in their invasion forces over several decades of war before they were eventually beaten back and confined to a few core star systems with a set of battle stations in orbit to keep them under quarantine. The more primitive species of Sapient Proliferators they found were of a similar ilk and on the same road, at least until they found us.

They are quite intrigued about a society which is not structured into Hives which never the less is capable of some level of moral restraint. They have a certain academic fascination with human cultures, philosophy, systems of government, economic systems (their economic systems are mostly Planned with commerce as we would think of it only happening on the Hive level or above at any meaningful level, the fact that we've done away with Slavery is a major point in our favor in their reckoning), artwork and similar and would like to maintain a set of research facilities on earth. They've also declared a zone of about 144 lightyears around Sol as a Terran Zone of Interest that they will not settle. They'd be willing to exchange some cultural, theoretical science, xenobiological information and some information on engineering, though they are reticent on giving us too much in the way of blueprints. They are also willing to take a few scientist on a tour of their Union and even see the confined Proliferators.

Please note: While they don't say this out loud due to it being impolite and not the sort of thing that diplomats that want to make a positive impression in first contact situations would say, if they wanted humanity dead they would have dropped an asteroid on us a few years back and have been done with the deed.

What would your opinion of this situation be?

Zor