Quote Originally Posted by Quabbin Hill Farms View Post
15 taps on a single tree is very bad as sugar making goes. When you make a tap hole an area of about 1 1/2 to 2 inches around and extended up and down from the tap hole becomes plugged with sugar sands and sap will never flow through that area of the tree again until the sapwood grows over it which could be 20 years. I have trees that are 3' feet across and I never place more than 2 taps this makes the tree sustainable for many years. You keep making 15 tap holes in that tree and you will soon run out of places to get a good tap.
Thank you for your advice. This season I put less taps in that tree. But It is a multi trunked tree. Not a single trunk tree like Sugar Maples are. We have Big Leaf Maples on our property that have up to 12 full size trunks from the same coppice. A very common occurrence with Big Leaf Maples to have multiple full size trunks.

One coppice Big Leaf with multiple full size trunks can produce up to 10 times the sap of a single trunked Sugar Maple per day when the sap is flowing

Only large single trunked trees are getting more than one tap on our property now.