Catapla...good sturdy wood for bee hives?

[MrGreenThumb]

Hello

I am able to get a nice supply of Catapla wood and was thinking about using it for hive construction. It is a full 1" thick and a nice soft brown color.

How well does to weather? Does anyone have some working knowledge of this wood?

thx

[Michael Bush]

Why not build a nice table, sell it and use the money to buy some cheap pine? ;)

[Ross]

The bees work the blooms :)

[NeilV]

Catalpa is a fine grained, soft but solid wood. People use it for wood carving, and I think its pretty expensive. Along Michael's train of thought, you could probably go to a specialty wood store and trade good Catalpa boards for Pine on a 1 for 2 swap.

[Patrick Scannell]

Catalpa is advertised as the fastest growing fence post because the tree grows quickly and the wood is rot resistant.

If you have it, and want to use it, I'd think it would make fine hives. A 1" catalpa hive might weigh a bit more than 3/4" pine.

[NeilV]

In case anybody is interested in Catalpa trees, I learned something about them recently. I've always liked them, and they're scattered through my neighborhood. They are a fast, growing, pretty flowering tree that bees supposedly like. However, I always assumed that since they grow fast and have soft wood that they would not be very sturdy.

We recently had a really bad ice storm (the initial estimate was 200,000 tons of tree debris in the city limits, and I suspect that's low). This experience indicated what tree varieties can take an ice storm. The Catalpa trees actually stood up really well, comparable to the white oaks, and way better than many other trees, such as pines, red oaks, red maples, silver maples, hackberry and elms. Apparently tree structure is just or more important than how hard the wood is.

[BerkeyDavid]

I agree with those who say go ahead and use Catalpa for some hives. There are a dozen old catalpa trees along the road near my place that were no doubt planted at the same time 60 - 100 years ago. They all lean from the prevailing southwest winds but have survived.

I think it would be cool to have some hives made from Catalpa. May not be the cheapest but it would mean a lot more to you to make it from the local materials.

I have ventilation boxes made from oak that my friend and I cut up in the woods, and vent boxes from local poplar. The oak was free and the poplar was very cheap, but even if not I like to use local stuff.

[riverrat]

I dont know about making hive bodies out of catalpa wood. But I can say they like to live in them. I have removed a lot of hives out of trees. For the most part the tree is either Catalpa, or silver maple.