Re-drilling holes????????

[Brad W Wi]

I tapped my trees on the 1st and 2nd of March, today is the 6th of April. Season is off to a slow and strange start. I've never seen a season like this before. I'm wondering about holes closing up and the need to re-drill. If so do I drill new holes or re-drill the old holes ?? Will being drill for 4+ weeks effect much, if anything?????????

[sbingham]

Brad - I am 20 miles south of you in the Tony area, I tapped on March 11th. It has been a tough year to say the least.
Everything that I have read or heard indicates that re-drilling or moving taps to a new hole in-season is not advisable.
To re-drill an existing hole gains minimal results and adding new tap holes is not good for the health of the tree.
It has been so cold, I wouldn't think there would be much bacteria to contend with.
I'm hoping once it warms up mid-next week (maybe) that we get a couple more sap runs.

[sticky face]

Good question Brad--one I have been thinking about myself, but do not have the answer to. Also wondering if the cold conditions slow the healing process, if anyone can answer that. We tapped on march 10th and between the cold and rodent damaged (65 out of 80 so far) bags our sap take is low. I was thinking about tapping different trees just in case they are healing by the next run.

[Austin351]

[QUOTE=sticky face; I was thinking about tapping different trees just in case they are healing by the next run.[/QUOTE]

I'm moving my non performing bags to new trees this weekend. Granted there are only about 20 of them, can't think it would hurt to roll the dice on a different tree. Shouldn't need to touch my 3/16" lines.

Brad - I know you got another couple hundred+ trees on your bush that could be tapped. :)

[Bgreisch]

I was thinking of the same thing with it being my 2nd year tapping NE of Merrill. I was thinking of tapping a couple new trees this weekend incase some of my 17 taps start drying up. I have only made a Gallon of Syrup so far with most of the sap only coming from a few of the 17 trees that get a lot of sun. I would only re-tap a tree if it is big enough to support having 2 taps if you are worried about them drying up.

Bryan

[Austin351]

Interesting:

http://mapletrader.com/community/showthread.php?32850-Posting-the-results-of-reaming-LONG

[bprifle01]

I'm far to the southeast of you and my season is over. Only because I made as much syrup as I wanted. I tapped the 17th of Feb and pulled my taps after seven weeks. Today I had sapcicles hanging from one of the tap holes. Perhaps just wait it out a little longer.

[motowbrowne]

Personally I wouldn't consider it unless we start getting sap weather again and you're not getting anything. With the weather as cold as it's been, I don't think your taps will have dried up yet. That said, these stretched out seasons with 5-10 day stretches of weather that's either too warm or too cold is the main reason that I switched to vacuum. I got tired of trying to guess when to tap and often getting it wrong.

[Brad W Wi]

Well I guess I'll just leave things as they are. This is the great thing about this web site, if you have a question someone has an answer. Let's hope that the season starts soon.

[Sugarmaker]

Brad,
Good to see your still in the syrup making business! Keep those orange tractors shined up too. I would also discourage you from redrilling. I tried it once and really did not see any benefits. Yes strange season with lots of cold weather. I am no where near you but feel the concerns. We are done for the year with about 2/3 crop produced. Seemed to be the longest season ever recorded!:)
Regards,
Chris

[GramaCindy]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that your tap holes will be fine Brad. It's been so cold, that there really hasn't been any microbial growth

[TwoSaps]

I tapped my trees on the 1st and 2nd of March, today is the 6th of April. Season is off to a slow and strange start. I've never seen a season like this before. I'm wondering about holes closing up and the need to re-drill. If so do I drill new holes or re-drill the old holes ?? Will being drill for 4+ weeks effect much, if anything?????????

Brad, I don't know this from decades of personal experience, but a scientific paper I read (I think from a guy at University of Vermont) concluded that the holes start closing with the formation of certain types of bacterial. That bacterial growth depends upon warmer temperatures. So my educated guess is that if it hasn't been warm enough to give us sap, we don't have to worry about the holes closing from this mechanism.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

I continue to experiment with this and different methods. I haven't been on here for a couple of months and took a lot of heat for posting results last year. We started tapping January 29th and finished last week of March. Our first boil was February 4th and our last boil was March 25th. The season was good temps and very conducive for sap flow except the third week of February we had 7 straight days of temps in the 60's and 70s and highest temp was 78. Some years, we haven't even hardly made any syrup by them so this really hurt a lot. We ended up with 579 gallons on 2,320 taps which is one quart shy of a quart per tap. Not impressive numbers but that was is 1.16 average sugar for the year or 75 to 1 sap to syrup ratio. If sugar was 2%, we would have been right at 1,000 gallons, well you get the picture. This is 2 years in a row I feel re-drilling has been a huge benefit to us. A majority of the taps and/or tap holes had huge chunks of pink and/or white yeast in them, some completely plugged with them. Temps in the mid to upper 70s in the first third of maple season is really tough and 2 years in a row, the same week. If not for that week, I am confident we would probably still be making some syrup.

What the re-drilling did was it completely cleaned out all of this huge chunks out of the tapholes and we slap whip the taps and drops against the tree to dislodge most or all of it out of the taps. The freezing and thawing helps clean out the rest and the lines, but if not for re-drilling, I don't think any of the syrup would have been table grade, likely all off flavored because of the instant contamination. We dumped a fair amount of sap which we didn't measure and let quite a bit more run on the ground by the middle of these crazy high temps and other times to help flush out the junk. We produced right at 300 gallons in February and another 280 in March.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

When we re-drill, we go 1/2" deeper which is 1.5" to 2" and some less on trees around 10". Since I am tapping 9 different properties some of which are adjacent to each other, we will try something different next year. I plan on tapping about 40% of the trees which are mostly west and south facing earlier than normal and only going 1" deep. Around March first, we will likely go to 1.5" deep and then around March 15th, go back and go take these taps to 2" deep. I really think this would provide the best production results but hopefully we will know more next year. What I see also, the timing with re-drilling is everything. I think it works best if you do it in a deep freeze between runs 1 to 3 days before another good run. I don't think it works as good doing it when it is warm or when it will be frozen up for a week or more.

We will also try going to 1.25" on some of the trees next year and when we re-drill, we will go 3/4" deeper instead of 1/2" deeper and the remainder we will go to the normal 1.5" when we tap initially.

[mountainvan]

70 in February then 3' of wet snow and 20+ days in March with no real sap flow I had no choice but to refresh my warmer sugarbushes. Cv spouts did not hold up well to those conditions and completely stopped, and even the antimicrobial spouts slowed considerably. After pulling out the bit from the refreshed hole it's like Christmas every time with sap pouring out. I'm back to getting a gal/tap from all my trees.Cold bushes at higher elevations with new drops and white spouts or antimicrobial spouts were/are still flowing well. Most of my trees were tapped in January.

[WI Sugarpop]

Redrilling. Interesting topic. We tapped Feb, 24 so we've been tapped in for 6 weeks. Weather has been cold but fortunately here in the Plymouth area we've had enough warm days to have some good sap runs but no gang busters. Because of the seasonable cold weather, the taps holes are still running. We just need to be patient. One thing I've noticed, because of the cold temps, is that the syrup batches have been consistently the same color throughout the season. Also, lower sap totals so far but much higher sugar than normal. Just my observations, and no opinions. If the season ended at the end of this week, we would be happy with our totals.

[DrTimPerkins]

After pulling out the bit from the refreshed hole it's like Christmas every time with sap pouring out.

As I've said a couple of times, this is the subject of an ongoing study at UVM PMRC, so hearing these reports is useful.

A couple of questions....did you ream (bigger diameter hole), drill a deeper hole, or both? Also, when did you retap (how many weeks after initial tapping, and how much time after the warm spell)?

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

I posted all of my information above but we re-drilled the first week of March and made syrup until the 25th. To be able to go almost 8 full weeks after going through 7 straight days of 60's and 70's the third full week of the season, I was very happy. We would have been close to the same gallons per tap as Proctor the last 2 years if we had gotten the same sugar content as they do. I posted this last year and again this year simply to help others. We have had great results 2 years in a row and while it may not be considered "RESEARCH" it has helped me tremendously and others too. We have used a polycarbonate spout 2 years in a row and the re-drilling if timed correctly will give you a couple more good weeks. The results this year were very satisfying, but the results in 2017 were mind blowing from all the years I have made syrup. We use a 5/16 bit for the first drill and the exact same size bit and same spout for the re-drill.

What I look at is that for the most part, we have a different climate than Proctor or Cornell and deal with some crazy temp swings they seldom see especially early in the season. I look for ways to help producers in the southern part of the maple belt to keep going for another 2, 3 or 4 weeks longer than when others have thrown in the towel. "When life gives you lemons, you have to make lemonade".

[Moser's Maple]

Hey Brandon you don't want your season to go too long, cause then you'll run into another problem.....rattle snakes!!!!:mrgreen:

[markcasper]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that your tap holes will be fine Brad. It's been so cold, that there really hasn't been any microbial growth

Not sure I'd stick my neck out that far......whenever I used to have open taps to the air (bags/buckets), I could really only ever count on 2 to 3 weeks from tapping regardless of the temps.

[RE Acres]

I would agree with the patience as well. It has been so cold and with so much frost that we have not had anything close to a normal run yet this year. Unless we get a fast warmup I expect things to be fine. I also have tried retapping in the past with poor results, but both times it was an attempt to extend the season.

[Bgreisch]

So I checked my taps this saturday, not much in the buckets in the past week but was actually surprised to collect about 8 gallons out of the 17 taps. But I did tap 5 new trees and tapped on the south side of the tree and even though it was like 29 degrees out 3 were flowing right after drilling even though the older taps were not flowing.
Bryan

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Hey Brandon you don't want your season to go too long, cause then you'll run into another problem.....rattle snakes!!!!:mrgreen:

Jake,

I have no poisonous snakes of any kind thankfully.

[Andy VT]

Tim Perkins mentioned in this thread that there is research happening on the topic of re-drilling holes.
I did a search here on the topic and landed on this thread.
It started when I read in The Maple News from this season ("Betting on his buckets: N.H. producer taps early
Sugarmaker plans on taphole rejuvenation on bucket taps") about a bucket operation that was "rejuvenating" taps for a longer season, but it did not specify what was meant by "rejuvenation".
I know it is well established that there is little to nothing to gain from "reaming" tap holes, since the healing extends a good six inches above and below the hole.
However, it does seem like drilling a 1.5" deep hole to maybe 2" at some point mid-season is an idea worth at least considering unless that has now been debunked as well.
In my little brain, it seems like the thing most likely to stop this from being effective is if at 2" you're potentially getting into heartwood, but there could be other factors.
If it does work, it seems like it could be game changing especially for a bucket operation who has a lot riding on best tapping timing.
In the 4 years since this thread went dormant is there more data on the topic? By a research facility and/or an experiment by any sugarer here?
Andy
(P.S., I also wonder about drilling bigger mid-season, such as from 3/16" to 5/16" for tubing, or from 5/16" to 7/16" for buckets, although would be higher cost)

[DrTimPerkins]

Very bad idea however you do it from a sustainability perspective.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PlnqFny5tpk

[Andy VT]

Very bad idea however you do it from a sustainability perspective.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PlnqFny5tpk

That's just what I was looking for, thanks!
That closes it for me, no re-drilling or reaming here!
Andy