TA News

By Tim Gray

As I started this experiment the question that I was trying to answer was, what kind of tap works best for sugar maple trees. The data was collected by putting up three different kinds of taps – bucket taps, tubing, and a primitive native American style tap.

I thought that if a primitive tap, tubing, and a bucket tap are used then the bucket tap would collect more sap because it flows straight into the bucket, where the primitive tap has to flow off of a shingle into a bucket and the tubing can freeze up. My guess was correct because the bucket tap collected more sap than the other taps. The data showed that the bucket tap collected 2,200ml worth of sap, tubing was in second place with 1,900ml of sap and the primitive tap came in last over the time that sap was collected with only 900ml.

Something that I observed was that it is a difficult skill to make primitive taps successfully. It was also observed that the sugar content from the sap collected from the primitive tap was higher. In conclusion the experiment showed that bucket taps are the best taps to use because they collected the most sap.