I fully support the idea of mixing things.
If you don't make it your own, it won't have that masterwork feel in the end, and fans of a specific series would rage on any details aanyway.
Zerg/Tyranids are a nice base, but they don't quite fit with DF or even the other masterwork races.
And it's not like the already playable races fit the usual tropes about them perfectly either (gnome railguns in medieval fantasy, orcs not being the big badass, dwarves with magic and genome science, humans able to commerce with demon's secrets with gold...), and that's what makes masterwork that much better (at least in my eyes).
The only thing I think as important for an insect swarm race is to be able to "make" your members very suited for 1 task, and awfull for the rest.
Most insect races that are depicted as civilizations have those warrior castes that are highly specialized, as well as specific worker branches to handle specific tasks. Along with more standard "drones" that are just hauler and builders, for when you need mass of simple work done.
EDIT: why don't we want to play other mods?
First is that most don't have that much, and lack some key features from masterwork (standardized materials is a must for me since I tried it years ago).
Second is that not all mods distribute full package, meaning that we need to install everything ourselves (gamers are lazy)
Third is that we simply don't have enough time, we are already full time on masterwork
.