The current “bee friendly” non-neonicotinoid seed coating made available to farmers this coming season is a fungicide called “Maxim Quattro“. I called the manufacturer Syngenta to get more info, and they told me that since this chemical is a fungicide, little to no toxicity assays for this product were performed on honey bees. I acquired the chemical composition of Maxim Quattro and found some pathetically vague results:
Maxim Quattro = 1. Fludioxonil: “slightly toxic/practically non-toxic” to bees 2. Thiabendazole: “relatively” non-toxic 3. Metalaxyl-M: non-toxic 4. Azoxystrobin: “slightly hazardous” to bees
Toxicity studies are also severely antiquated, and do not account for all the routes of exposure a bee can be subjected to when a complex synthetic chemical enters the ecosystem (e.g. via guttation)