Flood waters vs sugar content?

[red maples]

SO I hope this is the right place for this question but.

This year dating back to last early summer has been a strange weather one at the very least.

but my question is since we had all the rain the last few week and especially being flooded out last weekend and with the water table being 5+ feet above normal and alot of my trees had several feet of water up the trunk for several days. I watched my sugar content go from just 1.2% to .5% in just a few days. is this because its the end of the year and there is no more sugar or are the trees just moving so much water through them that any sugar that is left is dialuted so much???

[Three Saps Sugar Shack]

probably has more to do with the bacteria and warm temps. if your sap sits in a tank for two or three hours at ...say... 55 deg. bacteria could have consumed a large portion of your sugars, it is the end of season , and sugar % should be expected to drop off some but that sounds too drastic for buddy sap....

[red maples]

this is coming right out of the releaser!!!

a few other things that might shed light is they are almost all reds. and 50% are in or on the edge of the swamp, and are over crowded with small crowns. (I do plan on remove many small trees and doing some release cut to help out in the future)So I didn't expect very large % on sugar content numbers anyway. only a few are 9 inches but the rest are 10 inches or better. they are tapped rather high on the tree due to flat land. and are on vacuum pulling average 24" Hg.

I am thinking they are starting to bud and are just plain out of sugar!!!!

[PerryW]

I'm guessing you are sucking the river water right up through the trees and into your sap tank. Have you noticed any fish swimming around in your tank?
if your sap sits in a tank for two or three hours at ...say... 55 deg. bacteria could have consumed a large portion of your sugars,

I think someone told me here on mapletrader that it takes yeast to convert sugars, and that the bacteria really doesn't reduce sugar content (just creates off-flavors & reduces grade)

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Vacuum is just sucking nearly straight water from the ground up thru the trees.