What do you do with a dry/under-performing tap hole?

[Jonnyp390]

I have a small backyard setup with 18 taps into milk jugs and drop tubes into 5gallon buckets. Taps have been in for 5 or 6 days. Today is the first day that the sap is really flowing and looks like I should get over a gallon per tap for the day.

But.... I have two tap holes that weeped a little for a few days and now are dry. One of them is on a tree all by itself. The other one is on the south side of a big silver maple. The north tap has been dripping like crazy and the south is bone dry. Do you think I should be patient and leave them in, assuming they will get going soon, or should I pull them. If I pull them, can I relocate the tap in the same tree, or should I avoid drilling another 7/16 hole in the tree for fear of harming the tree? Thank you for any advice you can throw my way.

[ennismaple]

Sounds like you didn't get good sapwood. Note the poor location for next year and chalk it up to a lesson learned. I would avoid putting in another taphole because it'll stress the tree even more.

[Ed R]

Check the wood chips on the ground, if they are white leave the taps in, if the are brown you hit bad wood as ennismaple said. If you pull the tap check out the inside of the tap hole, you'll see the bad wood. Look up and down the tree to see if you can figure out the cause of the bad wood. this is one of the benifits of tapping with buckets, you can Id problem areas on individual trees.

[mantispid]

I've been curious about this too. If the trees have never been tapped before, can one put in an additional tap to replace one that dried out from early-season tapping? I'm very tempted to do this... I use 5/16" taps, too... and they do ~50% of total tap hole surface area damage to the tree as compared to 7/16"... I wonder if this means that putting in an additional tap would then effectively be similar total damage to one larger tap... hmm...

[DonMcJr]

Hey just remember we still haven't had good sap flow weather here in Michigan... Them tap holes may just be on the cooler side of the tree and not thawed out enough yet....

Last year I did have one tree that just didn't produce much so it may just be the tree too.

[happy thoughts]

I've been curious about this too. If the trees have never been tapped before, can one put in an additional tap to replace one that dried out from early-season tapping? I'm very tempted to do this... I use 5/16" taps, too... and they do ~50% of total tap hole surface area damage to the tree as compared to 7/16"... I wonder if this means that putting in an additional tap would then effectively be similar total damage to one larger tap... hmm...

I would not add another tap. It's not the surface damage you should be worried about but the internal damage and though internal damage from a 5/16 tap is much smaller than a 7/16 tap it's still damage that affects sap flow in later years. To add another tap defeats the whole purpose of smaller spouts- less internal injury and better tree health. But they're your trees and your decision.

[backyard sugaring]

For the fun of it check your tap. I bought some several years ago and they were plugged solid. Now I check every tap. Lee

[bowtie]

i have a huge split trunk silver in my lawn, and it really does not run that well ever. i still put 2 taps in it because my boys like the buckets in the trees. the tree is slowly dying,as upper sections are dead, i had to cut one the 4 trunks a couple years ago because it was dying and leaning toward my house. i also have some big reds in the woods that are very healthy appearing and give very little sap through out the year, i still tap them and take what nature gives me. if i had more sugar or hard maples i would not tap some of the reds but that is not the case. i have found that the general rule of 10 gallons per tree is somewhat misleading, some trees may give 15-20 others 2-3 so it averages out but i do not expect every tree to produce the same. trees can be as individual as us humans.
on somewhat different note i have a really nice hard that i tap in the woods and generally is a great producer, so when i tapped this year i must not have been paying attention and drilled the hole about 6 inches above an older(2 yr) tap hole:o, so i moved around the tree to an open spot and placed another hole and tap. thinking that the first hole would not run, well i was wrong the open hole is running down the tree while the "new" hole is not performing as well. i will put a tap in the open hole tomorrow and take what it gives, i used to put 2 taps in this tree in the past but this year only wanted to put one in it, next year it will only get one new hole.