retapping trees

[Tim Wagoner]

I have some friends up in IL that have tapped for several years but have not been intouch with them for about three years. I once heard one of them say that they were going to go and retap some of there trees one season. My question is does this hurt the tree if not how many times per year can you do this I use 5/16 eco spile. Here in KY our temp are so crazy i had some holes stop giving sap not long after they were taped. Yet with a few of the trees I retaped them and the sap flowed good. I don't want to hurt my trees so I wanted to ask people who would know. Thank you

[DrTimPerkins]

I have some friends up in IL that have tapped for several years but have not been intouch with them for about three years. I once heard one of them say that they were going to go and retap some of there trees one season. My question is does this hurt the tree if not how many times per year can you do this I use 5/16 eco spile. Here in KY our temp are so crazy i had some holes stop giving sap not long after they were taped. Yet with a few of the trees I retaped them and the sap flowed good. I don't want to hurt my trees so I wanted to ask people who would know. Thank you

Do you mean reaming (drilling out slightly larger) the same tapholes or drilling new holes?

If you mean reaming, several research studies have shown it is not a particularly effective strategy. You will get some sap to flow for a short period of time, so it looks like it works, but sapflow will very quickly slow down again. Essentially once the taphole is heavily contaminated with bacteria, reaming doesn't help much, especially if you put the same (dirty) spout back into the same hole.

Drilling a new fresh hole will result in better sap production, however this practice causes two wounds in the tree, with double the amount of staining column. Because this may be unsustainable in terms of tree wounding, it is typically not recommended.

Tim Perkins
UVM PMRC

[Russell Lampron]

From my own experience with retapping it isn't worth the effort. The way that I did it was to drill the holes 1.5" deep when I originally tapped and then drilled them a 1/2" deeper when I retapped. The sap flowed again for a day then came to a halt. Too much bacteria in the tubing and dirty taps.

[mountainvan]

I tap 1" into the trees and then another 1/2 " to ream, expose new wood. Last year I made 100+ gals, of syrup not sap, after "reaming". This was after a week of no sap flow. I did roughly 1,500 taps, two days of hard work. I "ream almost every year and make more syrup. To me the extra work is worth the money. The new spiles from maple innovations should alleviate the problem.

[Tim Wagoner]

The way that they did it was to drill new holes. Thank you guys for the info.

[KenWP]

How much of this extra sap flow is weather related. If the weather is warm your not going to get sap anyways and last year was one of those seasons. Got warm for a week or so and shut everything down and then away we went again.

[Tim Wagoner]

Very true but after each warm spell (one day flow another day none due to high temps one week time frame) the sap flow would be less and less until the trees stopped flowing. So I would tap a new tree. This is why I was wondering about retapping

[Beweller]

Instead of reaming, how about retapping--a few inches directly above or below the original tap. There are reasons to think that this would renew the sap flow while contributing little additional damage to the tree.

[caseyssugarshack93]

then you will have a other hole which would be like over tapping which is not good for the trees health.. Retapping/ reaming = BAD IDEA in my opinion I dont think you will get that much sap/syrup anyway

[3rdgen.maple]

I would never even consider retapping a tree in the same season. I do however ream sometimes. Last year I reamed every other tap to see if the trees that were giving up would get me any more. It did get me a few more days out of the ones I reamed but was late in the season and I was getting mersh by then anyways.