Bee-boles are recesses built into stone or brick walls, sized to shelter individual straw skeps, the domed baskets that served as beehives before the advent of the modern wooden hive. Positioned to catch warmth and avoid prevailing winds, these alcoves protected colonies through winter and allowed a gardener to tend bees without the skeps being knocked or disturbed. They were a practical solution, common across Britain and Ireland from the medieval period through to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, yet relatively few intact examples survive.