A hernia, CV's and tap hole spacing

[Brent]

With this crazy weather, I decided to start tapping our warmest bush. Over the weekend I put in 280 taps and got good flow.
Last year I got a hernia while assembling the evaporator at the beginning of the season ... bummer. When the season ended, I was
not in good shape to go out and pull the taps, which were all check valves. Months later and after the surgey, I pulled them. Surprizingly
the wood in the holes still looked clean and juicy.

Fast forward to this weekend and new tapping. A couple times I put holes in closer than normal to last years holes. The sap was still
gushing from them despite being so close to the old holes. Hmmm.... maybe leaving the check valves in for months had an effect on the
healing of the hole and a reduction in the stained wood area and it's reported inability to allow sap flow. So I got a little aggressive and cut
the distance between holes to about 1" horizontally and about 2" vertically from last years holes. There was still a good initial gush of
sap and it was splashing on my feed as I blew out the chips, moist spongy chips, and prepped the new check valve for tapping in.

I never saw darkened wood chips coming out. Never had a hole that didn't flow. Could this be an unexpected bonus because of leaving
the check valves in so long. This would be pretty valuable since most of the mature trees in my bush were logged out about 5 years ago
and the smaller diameter trees could be in danger of having too many holes, to close together.

No science, just observation.
Maybe Dr Tim would like to see how this works on his bush.

[Flat Lander Sugaring]

last year 2011 middlebury school I saw a pictures and a board with tap holes in them from various styles of taps and methods. the old taps for buckets had very large area of damage to the surrounding wood. Health spots had a lot less damage than the larger ones and the picture I saw of a vacuum tap hole the damage was almost nothing. There was damage but the wood looked very tan in color compared to the black dead stipes along the sides of no vac holes.
I would still tap opposite side of tree every year like we are advised to so not to stress tree I hope.
I personally feel using vacuum helps the trees bringing nutrients to the tap hole
my .5cent obama took the other 1.5

[sapman]

My wife recently walked the woods and pulled a tap (cv) I missed. She said it looked like it was flowing a little. I told her impossible. Maybe not!

[Brent]

My wife recently walked the woods and pulled a tap (cv) I missed. She said it looked like it was flowing a little. I told her impossible. Maybe not!

Absolutely possible. Some that I missed and found 2 months after the end of our first season with C/V's they were still flowing with clean looking wood.

[Thad Blaisdell]

Taps left in for a year will still leak sap. I have found numerous taps that I have missed that are all running a little sap. Not cv's either

[mapleack]

Were the holes from last year healed shut Brent? I'd worry about vac leaks if they aren't and you tapped that close to them.

[Vermonner]

Last week during tapping, came across some old, missed taps that were flowing. Not c/v's.