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The dwindling honeybee population is a concern in Richmond upon Thames and so the the fight is on to save agriculture's busiest workers. Supermarket giant Sainsbury has built a new “bee hotel” on the roof of its Hampton Tangley Park store. Robin Dean, the first ever supermarket bee keeper, said: “We hope that by setting these bee hotels up at a network of stores across the city, we'll be able to help rejuvenate the bee population in Hampton and learn more about why the population has decreased so dramatically over the past few years."  Hampton store manager Patrick Higgins says that they are passionate about supporting the local environment and everyone at the store is keen to support this project.

The hotel is designed to attract solitary bees, less likely to sting. It offers  an ideal habitat for bees to raise larvae, which will be collected by Robin and incubated until they are ready to be placed back into the hotel to hatch.

Environmentalists and bee keepers have long since advocated the planting of wildlife gardens to provide nectar for foraging honey bees and many gardens in the Richmond borough are admirably bee friendly. But with bee colonies dwindling dramatically in recent years, ravaged by disease as well as loss of habitat, beekeepers and the agriculture industry that relies on their hives, are facing an uncertain future. Bees are a very important part of the food chain with many fruit & vegetables dependant on them for pollination.

Reasons for the decline are complex and varied. Erosion of habitat is a major factor, as the countryside is "concreted over" , a second major challenge has been the varroa mite, which is endemic in bee populations and weakens the colony, making it susceptible to viruses. There is also a lot of talk about CCD, Colony Collapse Disorder, identified in 2006. Collapsed colonies have several features in common. While the queen remains, the worker bees appear to have disappeared, presumed dead, leaving large amounts of food in the hive and capped brood which are still to hatch.