(1) Background: Bees are the primary animal pollinators in most ecosystems, and honey bees (Apis mellifera L.) are important providers of pollination ecosystem services and products. Climate change is one of the major threats for honey bees. (2) Objectives and methods: Qualitative research using focus group discussions was carried out in northwestern Italy, to investigate the beekeepers’ perceptions of climate change effects, the relevant management adaptations, and the main issues affecting the sector. (3) Results: Beekeepers reported several consequences related to severe weather events (weakening or loss of colonies; scarcity of nectar, pollen, and honeydew; decrease or lack of honey and other bee products; greater infestation by varroa; decline in pollination), making it necessary to provide supplemental sugar feeding, intensive transhumance, more effective and sustainable techniques for varroa control, and increased production of nuclei. A strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis was completed, displaying the factors able to strengthen or weaken the resilience of the beekeeping sector to climate change. (4) Conclusions: Thanks to their strong motivation and collaborative attitude, beekeepers succeed in adopting farm and bee hive adaptation strategies that are able to limit the climatic adverse effects. However, these findings highlight how the institutional and financial support for the beekeeping sector should be strengthened and better targeted.

The EU has long-recognised the functions and contributions of beekeeping in sustainable rural area development. In 2018, the EU adopted the Pollinator Initiative to strengthen its pollinator conservation policies. To support the design of effective rural development actions, this work describes and tests an easy-to-apply, mixed-method tool for use with SWOT analysis. A two-step methodology was trialled with beekeepers in Piedmont Region (NW Italy). In step one, two independent groups of beekeepers operating in separate protected and intensive agricultural areas completed a SWOT matrix. In step two, three expert panels (beekeeper association leaders, honey market organisation leaders, and entomologists) prioritised the effects of the SWOT items with a quantitative weighting and rating process. Results suggest that the sector needs better-targeted incentives and that ‘soft’ policies on extension, advisory, and institutional measures could play a relevant role. The method was also confirmed as suitable for use with non-expert evaluators, such as policy officers and practitioners.

The evolution of farm size and land use are important determinants of the efficiency and profitability of agriculture and the configuration of the territory. In this paper, a conceptual framework of the evolution of the number of farms and land use is presented, arguing that a major determinant of the change in the number of farms is the presence or absence of successors to ageing farmers and that these socio-demographic variables shape the evolution of the sector in terms of farm size, while they do not significantly affect the changes in the farmed area. This hypothesis was empirically tested with data drawn from individual farm records of the Italian Agricultural Censuses of 2000 and 2010—aggregated at the municipality level for an Italian region—by estimating regressions on the decrease rates of the number of farms, the utilised agricultural area and the total agricultural area. The results support the conclusion that the change in the number of farms was largely determined by the absence of successors in family farms and by the average operators’ age, unlike the change in the farmed area, for which natural land conditions were the main drivers.

The future of rural landscapes in Europe is the subject of considerable debate between policy-makers and researchers. This paper aims to analyse public awareness of social, economic and political forces affecting future rural landscapes in an effort to support local planning policies implementing the European Landscape Convention in a rural landscape (Piedmont, Italy). Public consultation with two focus groups (Institutional Stakeholders and Civil Society Stakeholders) was set up to reveal personal perceptions. In the first part, the main driving forces affecting local landscape transformations were identified and their likely effects were discussed with the participants. Participants’ preferences regarding three alternative future scenarios were analysed in the second part. Results confirmed the complexity of a shared decision-making process in planning rural landscapes. Not only did the two groups differ in expectation, perception and attitude, but also in their interpretation of the landscape scenarios.