BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER > EQUIPMENT USAGE, EXPERIMENTATION, HIVE PLANS, CONSTRUCTION TIPS AND TOOLS
types of wood to use
mcassidy2004:
I am new to beekeeping, i have seen very little information on what types of wood is best for building a hive. I have seen that most hives are constructed from pine, being a relatively inexpensive wood to buy and in the southern USA some are using cypress for its ability to hold up to humidity. I am a hobby woodworker and I have a bunch of trees on my property that i am going to have milled for my use as lumber, I have never seen anyone use cedar as a wood for the hive body, it has great properties for resistance to weather, humidity, insects, etc... I have seen cedar being used as a roofing material, but never as a hive body, I also have birch trees that i am going to have milled.
cao:
Welcome :happy:
I am of the opinion that the bees don't care what wood you use. I would stay away from treated wood that would be in contact with honey and bees. Most hives are built with pine because it's cheap and relatively lightweight. You can make them as fancy as you want.
mcassidy2004:
would you stay away from cedar? I will be having a bunch of rough cut that i can plane out and build with, im going to build a sauna out of cedar from my property.
divemaster1963:
I use cedar for hives. i use any type of wood I ca get. as long as it is dryed and not green wood. cedar may help with moths and shb,s. have few shb,s in my cedar hive thats in shade than ones in sun. go figure.
use any type wood you can get.
john
BeeMaster2:
I built my first hives from cedar. They hold up real well. The moths don't like them but the SHB do not care about the smell. I lost my first hive to SHB sliming it because the queen had DWV and never mated.
Jim
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
Go to full version