Did you also catch the bit where she said in many studies, neonics seemed to have no effect on bees?
Sorry, you know I cannot keep quite when pesticides and bees come up. So do forgive me in advance for one of my rambles.
I may or may not have seen some lab based neonicotinoid studies on apis mellifera!
When conducting lab based studies the bees are placed in small round cages. They are fed or have a topical treatment applied to their backs. These studies are only concerned with mortality. And with this testing method the bees do not have a significantly higher mortality than the control treatment.
However a different type of study did find an effect. This was a field study where bees were exposed in a more natural way.
The thing with neonicotinoid is that it's not toxic to bees in a conventicle sense. Its a bit more comparable to a human getting drunk, ok, a massive dose will kill you. But for smaller doses, you just get drunk. If it was your 1st time getting drunk and I got you lashed, then tucked you up in bed in a nice little round cage, with food, in a temperature/humidity controlled cabinet, chances are you will be alright. But if you were in a random field miles from home and you have to fly home alone, its getting dark or starts to rain - chances not so good.
More advanced studies have shown that neonics interfere with the bees navigation abilities too.
So in shot, yes - many neonics studies, showed no effect on bees. It would never have been certified to begin with if that were not the case.....
But the positive to come out of this is the recent increase in bee testing. More field tests are being demanded by the regulators. I heard a rumor that some crop protection products still in development were shelved, because the manufactures secretly knew they would not withstand the enhanced testing on bees.