Bee boles
Recessed alcoves built into garden and field walls to shelter skeps from rain and wind. Thousands survive across Britain and Ireland, and they are the only physical evidence of beekeeping in many places that left no documents at all.
Current status
Historical
No longer practised. Known from documents, excavation or ethnography.
No longer in use for beekeeping. The structures survive and are catalogued as heritage features; a small number are used decoratively or by heritage apiaries.
What they are
A bee bole is a rectangular or arched recess in a stone or brick wall, typically about half a metre across, built to hold one skep. They are usually south or south-east facing, often in rows, and frequently on the sunny side of a walled garden or a farmyard enclosure.
The purpose is straightforward: a straw skep in the open needs a cover against rain, and a recess in a thick wall provides shelter, thermal mass and a stable base without one. Some have slots for a closing board or a ledge for a slate.
Why they matter as evidence
A national register records thousands of surviving examples in Britain and Ireland, most dating from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. They are structural, so they survive where hives, tools and records do not, and they show beekeeping in places where no document mentions it.
Where they are found
Bee boles cluster in walled gardens, farmyards, monastic and estate walls, and in field boundaries in stone-building regions. Scotland, northern England, Wales and Ireland hold high concentrations, which reflects both the availability of stone and the survival of the walls rather than any regional peculiarity of beekeeping.
Related structures exist elsewhere in Europe, including recesses in Iberian and Italian walls built for the same purpose, and they are documented far less systematically than the British and Irish examples because nobody has compiled a register of them.
What this page does not claim
That the surviving distribution maps where beekeeping happened. It maps where substantial walls were built and have stood, which is a different thing, and some recorded boles may have had other uses.
In short
- Wall recesses built to hold and shelter a straw skep, usually south facing.
- Thousands survive and are catalogued; they are structural, so they outlast everything else.
- They are dated by their walls, which makes the dating approximate.
Sources
- Bees and Beekeeping: Science, Practice and World Resources — Heinemann Newnes (1990) · Monograph
- The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting — Routledge (1999) · Historical text
How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.