I have about 25 "roadside" trees surrounding a church near me and they produce wonderful quantities of good sap. To keep the aesthetics I use buckets on these trees. Collecting is problematic because it's only me and I have to pull my truck up to a central point and collect as many buckets as I can then move on to another central point. All the while I'm going back and forth with full buckets, sometimes spilling precious sap. I've thought about using a yoke with 5 gallon buckets, but the trees have 2 buckets on each of them and most days they are full. That's 4 gallons x 4 buckets = 16 gallons for two trees and that's more than two 5 gallon containers could hold.

I guess I could use the 5 gallon buckets for each tree, but I'm wondering if there is an easier way. Is there such thing as a self priming pump (that's relatively quiet) that I could start and walk with a hose from tree to tree and just stick it in have it be pumped out? I could get some kind of retractable hose and that way I'm walking out and coming back once which would make collecting a LOT easier.

Any ideas or am I doing it the best way?

Thanks - Dave