sustainability Article Carbon Footprint of Honey in Different Beekeeping Systems Arianna Pignagnoli 1 , Stefano Pignedoli 1 , Emanuele Carpana 2 , Cecilia Costa 2 and Aldo Dal Prà 1, *   Citation: Pignagnoli, A.; Pignedoli, S.; Carpana, E.; Costa, C.; Dal Prà, A. Carbon Footprint of Honey in Different Beekeeping Systems. Sustainability 2021, 13, 11063. https://doi.org/10.3390/ su131911063 Academic Editor: Michael S. Carolan Received: 10 June 2021 Accepted: 4 October 2021 Published: 7 October 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 Centro Ricerche Produzioni Animali—CRPA S.p.A, Viale Timavo 43/2, 42121 Reggio Emilia, Italy; a.pignagnoli@crpa.it(A.P.); s.pignedoli@crpa.it (S.P.) 2 CREA Research Centre for Agriculture and Environment, Via Di Saliceto 80, 40128 Bologna, Italy; emanuele.carpana@crea.gov.it (E.C.); cecilia.costa@crea.gov.it (C.C.) * Correspondence: a.dalpra@crpa.it; Tel.: +39-0522-436999 Abstract: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been increasingly used for the improvement of the environmental performance of products and services, including agro-food chains. Pollination by honeybees can be regarded as one of the functions of an apicultural system and is of utmost impor- tance for both natural ecosystems and agriculture. Furthermore, the beekeeping chain can represent an instrument for the protection and conservation of honeybee diversity when local subspecies are used. The Carbon Footprint of honey evaluates greenhouse gas emissions throughout the Life Cycle Assessment—more specifically, emissions of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane. To this aim, data from beekeeping farms were collected, including data on annual honey production, other hive products, the geographical locations of the apiaries, processing plants, technologies used, and fuel and energy consumption. Based on the ISO 14040 method for the use of Life Cycle Assessment, the Carbon Footprints that were calculated for honey ranged from 1.40 to 2.20 kg CO 2 e/kg of honey for migratory beekeeping and from 0.380 to 0.48 kg CO 2 e/kg of honey for non-migratory beekeep- ing. The movements for the management of migratory beehives (on average, 44 km/hive for farm 1, 32 km/hive for farm 2, and 13 km/hive for farm 3) represented the main impact in migratory beekeeping systems, and they were quantified as 1.234, 1.113, and 0.68 CO 2 e/kg of honey. However, electricity represented the main impact of systems without migratory practices. Keywords: carbon footprint; GHG emissions; honey; migratory beekeeping; stationary beekeeping 1. Introduction The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been identified by the European Commission as the only method that is able to quantify the environmental loads of products and processes from a holistic perspective [1]. In the last few decades, LCAs have been applied to a wide variety of processes. In particular, this methodology became very popular for environmental assessments of food supply chains. Concerning some of the most important agri-food production in Italy, Gilson et al. [2] suggested that the impact of milk production ranges from 1.18 to 1.51 kg CO 2 e, whilst each kilogram (kg) of fresh tomatoes produced emits 2.28 kg of CO 2 equivalent [3]. According to other authors, organic cropping systems displayed, on average, 67.49 kg CO 2 e/t for marketable fresh tomatoes vs. 55.16 kg CO 2 e/t in conventional cropping systems [4]. Among honey substitutes, Wallen et al. [5] estimated that 4.18 kg CO 2 e is emitted to produce 1 kg of sweeteners, including sugar, honey, and treacle. In particular, LCA studies focused on sugar estimated a variable Carbon Footprint range from 0.45 to 6.31 kg CO 2 e/kg of sugar depending on the technologies applied and the type of cultivation [6,7]. However, in the literature, there have been only a few LCAs implemented in apiculture [8,9]. Beekeeping is a fundamental activity for both human and environmental existence: It provides food products and ecosystem services through pollination. Bee products (honey, nectar, beeswax, etc.) are considered to have a great range of benefits for human health [9,10], but beekeeping also ensures the presence of many crops and wild plants through pollination [11–13]. Sustainability 2021, 13, 11063. https://doi.org/10.3390/su131911063 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability