Abstract: In order to avoid structural failure caused by local buckling of castellated member webs, the influence of transverse stiffening rib on the hysteresis behavior of a regular hexagonal honeycomb steel beam should be studied emphatically. In this paper, the failure mode, local stability and hysteresis performance of castellated steel beams under reciprocating load are studied by means of test and finite element analysis. The test specimen are 2 transverse stiffening rib castellated beams with the same opening rate but different web thickness ratios, and compared with 2 non-stiffened rib castellated steel beams with the same parameters. The results show that:under a low cycle reciprocating load, the specimen of transverse stiffening rib is arranged in the pier plate of the hole, and the pier plate is restrained by transverse stiffening rib to reduce the influence of local buckling of webs. The failure mainly occurs in the hole angle position. Compared with the non-stiffened rib castellated-steel beams, the hysteretic performance of the lateral stiffening-rib specimen is obviously improved. It shows that the layout of transverse stiffened rib is different, the failure mode of the castellated beam is changed, and the hysteretic performance is greatly affected. The reasonable stiffening rib placement can effectively improve the hysteretic performance of castellated steel beams.