Best time of day to check buckets?

[Maple River Sugar]

This will be my first season and I had a basic question. When is the best time to collect sap from drop line to buckets. Is the timing mostly weather related as in waiting till sap thaws or empty them in afternoons after the sap runs? I'm just trying to efficient in my route, i realize there maybe some days when I may run my route twice in a day. I'm using 5 and 4 gallon buckets. Thanks

[Sunday Rock Maple]

Generally late afternoon or early evening.

[Haynes Forest Products]

Its all about your cooking scheduled. If your cooking at night then you will collect and cook. Now because the sap will still flow for a while before night time freeze up you will have small amounts of frozen sap in the bucket come morning. That will be a PITA if you collect in the morning BUT if you wait till the next evening to collect it will have mostly melted by then and kept your sap fresh.

Every woods will be different as far as sap flow and freezing temps so within a week you will have a good basic feel for when is best. With tubing and buckets rain won't be a factor like the open bucket guys. Then you have the rainy, windy bucket guys. There are so many reasons to collect off schedule but you will figure it out. Then you have the HELP AVAILABLE twist.

Now once again fill in your Bio so we can see what you have. Because collecting 10 buckets is way different than trying to collect the lower 250 in a blinding snow storm with projected freezing temps for the next 5 days with gale force winds and the buckets are over flowing with 4%

[Ed R]

I agree with Haynes' when you have help available comment. For me if manpower is not a factor I like to wait until an hour or two after it has started to run the next day. That way you can throw out the ice after it loosens up and shorten your boil. If you have an ro this is not as big of deal.

[Russell Lampron]

You can and should check them at any time during the day. When they are getting close to full go collect them. Collect as late in the day as possible to get as much of the run as possible before the run stops. I used to have to start collecting around 3 in the afternoon and depending on the run there were times when I was leaving a lot of the run in the woods.

I've got everything on tubing with vacuum now and collect when I need more sap to keep the RO going. Depending on the run that can be first thing in the morning or 10:30 at night but mostly mid afternoon and early evening.