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How about creating a kind of 'Hive Queen'. A large, dangerous, insect that will eat the amassed food. Once she has eaten enough, she will settle somewhere to create a new hive, replacing the normal hive recreation method.

An alternative would be completely replacing hives with queens, eggs and the likes. the hives could still be there as a starting point/way to produce insect-jelly, but reproduction would be done by the queen.

Here is an elaboration on what I think the most optimal version of the tiberium poisoning would be in rimworld.

Frostbite might serve as a good base for tiberium poisoning. After the player gets a certain value for "cold" the frostbite will be applied. If the players stays cold, it will be applied in more places and worsen. Using this as base for the tiberium poisoning, the player will get a 'tiberium exposure' de-buff when walking through (or maybe near) tiberium fields. This will increase rapidly unless the player is clothed in protective gear. Moving to a safer place will really slowly reduce the de-buff.

When the tiberium exposure reaches a certain level, 'Tiberium Toxemia' may happen. This can happen as Poisoning, Assimilation or Mutation.

Tiberium poisoning would cause all kinds of randomized bad effects like reduced metabolism, reduced blood pumping/filtration and other negative effects, and would last really long. (these are the effects of low level tiberium exposure according to the cnc wikia).

Tiberium assimilation is when tiberium starts growing on, or in, your body. Its fatal really quickly, if it spreads into vital organs. It is mostly the same as the current 'natural tiberium poisoning', except for the fact that it spreads to other body parts.

Tiberium assimilation can happen by breathing in small tiberium particles, falling over and touching a piece of tiberium, or cutting yourself on a sharp edge of a tiberium crystal, leaving the particles in the wound. The current only cure is amputation.

If a mutation happens during the assimilation process, the host will adapt to the tiberium.
my suggestions for mutants are;
-Extremely low chance of occurring.
-Immune to tiberium exposure and poisoning. (or even dependant/addicted to tiberium radiation)
-Assimilation won't be fatal, and there might even be positive effects. (maybe some positive and negative ones so it can't be abused)
-Immune to further mutation?



Underneath here are some more random suggestions.
-Dangerous raw tiberium? (Accidents happen. Working with this probably requires a suit.)
-Tiberium Silo (for save storage, reasons above).
-Different kinds of tiberium are harvest able from tiberium plants? (so you can make it on a map with 1 kind of tiberium)
-Interactions with luciferium? (immune to tiberium? Guaranteed addicted mutant? Other?)
-Different rates of exposure for different kinds of tiberium
-Deepdrilling and tiberium veins
-Mutation happens during low tiberium exposure instead of during assimilation. (More lore-friendly, lower chance, but players can use this to try go for a mutant).

[My experience with this mod]

Here is my view on the mod thus-far.
This will be followed by suggestions for the mod.

My experience with this mod
The requirements to build a tiberium research bench are too high, while research itself isn't complete yet. When I started on a normal world, as a rich explorer, after some time a mutated tree event happened. Green tiberium started spreading, while I could do nothing to stop it without tiberium protection-suits. Although some traders wandered in with suits, as they are really expensive, I could only buy them after the green tiberium swallowed about a quarter of my world.

Stopping the tiberium growth was possible only because of the cold weather and the snow in the boreal forest, slowing it down, until I had a tiberium suit. In the warmer period following that it grew as fast as I could clear it. (I had 2 complete suits during that period) Moreover, even though I had 2000+ green tiberium, and some blue tiberium that had dropped with pods, I had no red tiberium, and thus no way to start researching.

Since there seem to be no tiberium selling organizations (as in, I can't buy it anywhere, Yet I can buy the research books by the dozen), the moment I had the red tiberium needed (by cheating the event), I completed all research in a few days, before not even needing the iron produced by the green tiberium, the only tiberium that currently grew on the map.

My suggestions;
-More protective gear against tiberium.
-Reworked tiberium poisoning.
-Refined and liquid tiberium.
-Better spread out, and more research, centred around tiberium.

Underneath here I will explain the suggestions. Starting with More protective gear and saving research for last.

More protective gear.
Currently, one can only harvest the needed tiberium to do research after collecting a tiberium protection suit. This process takes a long while, and the only other option would be to sacrifice some pawn to gather enough tiberium to be able to research the suits ourselves. 

A plausible answer to this problem would be a lower tier protection suit, that can be made before harvesting any tiberium. The distinction between basic and advanced(current), would be that the basic gear wears down faster, might have a chance to get poisoned, doesn't work in blue/red tiberium, or the pawn can only stay inside tiberium for so long before needing to go somewhere safe.

Reworked tiberium poisoning.
-Currently tiberium poisoning happens inside 1 place at a time. That place gets "infected" and does not truly spread, even when staying inside a tiberium field. What I expect to happen is; staying in a tiberium field does not only speed up the infection, but other parts also get infected. Once you leave the field however, the infection rate slows down a lot.
The lungs and uncovered skin are the most likely to be infected.


Refined and liquid tiberium
Its in the name, really. Nothing special here.

Research
Currently the cost for the research bench is incredible high. This can be divided by making the research bank cheaper, but having to add in certain analysis nodes (kind of like a multi-analyser) to allow certain researches.

It would work like this; After crafting a 'Green Tiberium' book, one can craft a 'Green Tiberium Analysis Node' using the research book just made. This can be placed near the research bench like a multi-analyser, and is required for certain researches.

I hope these ideas help a bit, and wish you good luck in further developing this mod.