> There are several hundred acres of unmanaged forest within easy walking distance of my house.

"Unmanaged", or just not being actively logged right now?  My woodlot in VA has not seen a chainsaw since 1992, when the hemlocks had to go, due to hemlock woolly adelgid infestation, a battle that the tree cannot win.

> Seems like [magnolias are] always hollow once it gets big enough

We examined this question several years ago, let me run a search: 

https://community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?A2=BEE-L;ee87e770.2011
https://tinyurl.com/587cytas

https://community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?A2=BEE-L;937c7282.2011
https://tinyurl.com/54h8bdv5

In short, magnolias don't really "hollow", nor grow "in pairs", they instead split, and each half survives with a rotted-out wound area that never heals, as in the photo in the above post.  The makes the world's worst possible bee cavity, as both halves are fully open, and more a start at making a dugout canoe than a bee nest.

> Most of the oaks are probably hollow too

Oaks are the go-to bee tree, hence the James Fenimore Cooper book "The Oak Openings; or, The Bee Hunter" (1848).  Not a valuable reference for practical bee-tree hunting, Cooper never traveled west of New Jersey, so his information was 3rd or 4th hand.  (The first book on the subject written by someone with verified hands-on experience is "The Bee Hunter" (1949, George Harold Edgell), who begins his book with “It is time for someone who has hunted bees and found bee trees to write the facts.”  He was the director of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts at the time.  One can read it online here:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/65820/65820-h/65820-h.htm

> the value of my woodlot and he said prices are so low, I would be giving the wood away

Woodlots are an investment for one's grandchildren, not for oneself.
Cicero’s "Tusculan Disputations" has what may be the oldest analysis of the ROI in the treatise  “On the Contempt of Death: "Serit arbores quae alteri saeculo prosint" (He plants trees for the benefit of later generations).  John Qunicy Adams read this, and made the phrase his "motto" - he even had a family crest made with the phrase "alteri seculo" and an acorn.  (Punchline - his Latin was shaky - it should have really been "alteri saeculo", with the "a" in Cicero's time of "Old Latin".)
 

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