deal is pine or fur and redwood is sequoia
Not so in the timber trade. Red wood is heartwood from various softwood species, and when we have had boxes made from red wood (as opposed to Redwood, which is indeed the US name of a tree species) its origin has been pine from Russian arctic ports, one batch went under the title of 'Kara Sea, firsts to fourths' which I presume to have been the grading standard.
White wood is the sapwood, which is usually lighter, absorbs loads of preservative, and rots sooner. Correctly looked after it can still make perfectly good bee boxes, albeit more prone to shrinkage and expansion with varying water content and increasing age. It you go for the paraffin wax impregnation method of preserving boxes this is about the best and cheapest wood to use. Its also the wood most commonly sold as 'deal'.
Smith and Langstroth boxes are normally made with single boards 9" and more in width, and as another poster pointed out, this width in good quality requires old trees with a big heartwood, and it is indeed getting scarce and expensive here.
We have some red wood boxes that are of great age, and although a little heavier they have reached 50 yrs at least and still going strong. Our oldest aged boxes of which we know the age for sure are 63 years old, made by my father in 1949, and are Eastern Yellow Pine from the USA. The wood was older than that, as my father got it from stored knocked down packing cases for tractors sent over from the USA during the war. Still good.
Cedar, being softer, does tend to be a bit battered and worn by that age. However, there are some cedar boxes too, that we THINK are from the mid 1930's as my father bought them second hand, and already quite aged, in 1950.
Because of its toughness I tend to have a preference for red wood over cedar. Cedar first are so expensive tas to render them a luxury item, and seconds, of which we have several hundred in service of less than 10 yrs vintage, can indeed rot, especially at the knots. Thus we use preservative on all of the timber types.
Nicest boxes I ever saw were Cypress ones from the US. Not a fringe line either, as there is a company that specialises in it in commercial quantities.
