These are bee-boles, niches constructed specifically to house skeps, the domed hives woven from coiled straw that were the standard vessel for keeping bees before the modern wooden hive came into common use. Bee-boles are rare survivals anywhere in Ireland, and this example at Milford is among the better-preserved sets in the country, its ten openings still largely intact, their overlapping flat-stone roofs still projecting slightly forward to keep the rain off whatever skeps once sat within them.

The structure dates to around 1650, according to a study by Crane published in 1983, placing it in the 17th-century phase of Milford House, the older portion of which projects to the rear of a later 18th-century block on the same site. The bee-boles are not set directly into the garden wall itself but into a free-standing walled structure, roughly 11 metres long and 3 metres wide in total, which sits along the top of the sunken southern wall of the garden. That southern wall drops about 1.4 metres, and a ledge runs along its upper face in front of the niches, which face north-north-east. Each opening is rectangular on the outside, with a flat lintel, and widens into a rounded interior, giving the skep a snug fit within the stone. The ten openings are spaced between half a metre and three-quarters of a metre apart. Towards the western end of the structure, a roughly four-metre length of walling has begun to lean forward, and a small buttress has been added in an attempt to prevent further movement, a quiet sign that the structure, nearly four centuries old, is not entirely stable.