Who else makes maple syrup?

[heus]

I have a small maple syrup operation (300-500 taps) in NE Ohio. Seems like quite a few people in my area do the maple and beekeeping thing. Just wondered if anyone else on here in the northeast has a maple syrup operation.

[Waterbird17]

I got a small operation in Morris County, NJ.


We run 30 buckets, of a rigged propane e-vap. I'm upgrading to a 2x4 this year.

[HoneyMaple]

I run 225 taps in Hebron, New York
All run right to the saphouse and am boiling on a 20 x 66 Darveau evaporator with a Marcland drawoff controlled by my own controller.

[Waterbird17]

sounds like a nice little set up.

I'm thinking about running some gravity lines this next year from the drop lines to 55gal drums or something. This year was terriable for me. I was expecting about 10 gal. +/- and I barley made 5. I am slowly becomming obsessed with maple productuion in addtion to bees, and chickens, and hunting, and fishing, and gardening, and etc. story of my life.

You have your own farm or do you tap sorrounding areas?

[HoneyMaple]

All of mine are on my own property. Could have more but there is enough there to keep me busy when it is running.

[HTC]

A Florida Boy is getting very hungry just thinking about maple syrup. Is the real stuff that much better? I may have to wait another twenty years for the good stuff to get here to find out.

[HoneyMaple]

Everyone has there own likes. In my experience, most people who say that they don't like real maple syrup have either never had the real stuff or bought sub standard syrup.

[wildforager]

We put in a whopping 40 taps....usually. This spring was really bad and we missed the season (I heard it ran in January!). Here's a video about our maple operation.... http://youtu.be/qf272hpbjig

[NeilV]

I suspect this question is sort of like "how much honey does a bee hive make," but I'll ask anyway: how much syrup can you get per tree?

[Bee Bliss]

Each tap will yield about 1 quart of finished syrup. We have two sugar maples in our back yard that we tap.

[wildforager]

Last year was a great year. From 40 taps we got 10 gallons of finished syrup.

[heus]

In 2011 we got .38 gallons per tap with 331 taps. 2012 was lower due to s shorter season.

[Michael Palmer]

I suspect this question is sort of like "how much honey does a bee hive make," but I'll ask anyway: how much syrup can you get per tree?

I used to sugar back in the 70s and early 80s. Got up to 5000 taps before I decided that bees were better for me. I ran sugar woods with buckets, buckets and tubing, and woods with vacuum and reverse osmosis.

I also worked for Leader Evaporator for a number of years making sugar utensils, and Maple Country Can, fixing maple syrup can machinery.

With buckets, we always figured one quart of syrup per tap. Gravity tubing was about the same. Vacuum tubing improved the yield a Little, but recent improvements have really boosted production. Better vacuum systems, and ball valve spouts, have increased production to near one half gallon of syrup per tap.

[Mtn. Bee]

I was wondering how this year was for sapp'n?
Kinda heard thru the grapevine that production was down due to a bad season!

[THALL]

It was a very short season. As for production, depends on which side of the hill you live on...for most it was below average , then again there were some who did about average. If they take last years bumper crop and this years lousy crop it should average out.

[heus]

Fortunately we tapped early. Season came to a sudden halt when temperatures hit 75 in mid March.

[4boysbees]

I was just thinking about posting a Maple Syrup question here, but I was beat to the punch! I am thinking about trying it out next winter. I live in Western KY, and we have several Amish farms that tap trees, so I guess it is possible here. Any advice as to where a beginner can get the basic equipment? I have around 30-40 trees that I can tap easily. This will give me something to do while my bees are resting up!

[Mtn. Bee]

I was just thinking about posting a Maple Syrup question here, but I was beat to the punch! I am thinking about trying it out next winter. I live in Western KY, and we have several Amish farms that tap trees, so I guess it is possible here. Any advice as to where a beginner can get the basic equipment? I have around 30-40 trees that I can tap easily. This will give me something to do while my bees are resting up!

Do a google search for maple sapp'n stuff and you would be surprised how many suppliers are actually out there.
I searched a while back and found all kinds of suppliers but it doesn't help me much now that I live in the west, no maple trees except for a few yard trees and Rocky Mountain Maple Brush everywhere but they don't make taps that small!

[heus]

Two great websites are mapletrader.com and sugarbush.info I found this site from those two.

[heus]

Here's my new 2.5x10 Amish made evaporator