Thinking about "Boring" my tapped holes a little deeper/bigger...?

[Agent914]

My flow has been very poor over the past week, even my “good trees” are starting to slowing down in this early season :confused: They are now producing cups of sap not gallons.

I am thinking the recent warm weather we experienced, caused the trees to start to seal themselves. Other than this coming Saturday forecast of 50’f the weather is supposed to be perfect for the next week.

So I am thinking about re-boring the holes again… a little deeper/bigger… tonight.

Any thoughts? :confused:

[PerryW]

I have reemed my holes in the past to get the late season sap runs, though I try to avoid it. If you run the same size drill in the hole, but go another 1/4" or less, you usually can get a few more days of sap flow. I would wait until the morning of a predicted sap flow, before reeming.

[happy thoughts]

jmho, but I wouldn't mess with the taps. Deeper and bigger means more damage to the tree and you also run the risk of leaky taps. And unless you re-sanitize the spiles you're using, you'll just be innoculating the new wood with the same microbes that caused the taphole to seal off.

If you have extra taps and other maples, and the season looks long enough to make it worth it, I'd throw in some new taps. But that's just my 2 cents:)

[Burnt sap]

I would not go any larger only a bit deeper from past trials and errors. You will cause the taps to leak from all around it. You may also cause the trees to seal off.

[jmayerl]

don't do it! the bacteria has already spread out inside the tree near the hole. you might get a bit more sap for a day if you go to the next size larger tap but the damage to the tree is far worse than the reward.

[3fires]

I'm not sure when you tapped them to be able to guess if they're sealing off, but I had a slow week last season and the next week when temps got back to normal the sap flowed better than ever. too warm low flow, too cold low flow, and it seemed like it took the trees a good two or three days to get back to normal.

[batsofbedlam]

Probably a bad idea.

[lafite]

I have slowly introduced check valves into my gravity system. they seem to run until I pull them.

[killingworthmaple]

I am in CT and had the same problem last week after the warm days the sap stopped flowing. I redrilled and the sap is running again I did not redrill some of the trees to see if it really made a differents and it does. The trees that I redrilled are giving my much more sap that the ones I left. I had 5/16 taps with CV in them they were tapped the last week in Jan. I redrilled them to 7/16 pulled off the CV and used the stubby.

Nathan

[Agent914]

I redrilled / reemed my tapped holes (Just a little) and the flow came back. My taps went from cups of sap back to gallons....:)