The stark Truth about Birch-tapping.

[scarfell]

uK Birch are under attack from many directions, increasingly so over the last ~20 yeas, while it might be possible the taps speeded up their death slightly, in reality, birch is fighting a tough battle against disases and pests


Sticking a 2 inch deep hole into a relativly thin silver birch is defiantly not a great idea... the trees which are tapped commercially (and by Ray Mears) are not little 2ft diameter silver birch.

 

[dennydrewcook]

Sticking a 2 inch deep hole into a relativly thin silver birch is defiantly not a great idea... the trees which are tapped commercially (and by Ray Mears) are not little 2ft diameter silver birch.

Where is your evidence for this? As I've been doing it over a number of sites for more than five years now, not a single casualty? Would like to know how you can be so sure about this?

 

[Robson Valley]

Your birch is not our birch. Betula papyrifera in the 4"-6" diameter class is the preferred stock for commercial harvest,
both here in British Columbia and also in the Russian far east, places like the Kabarovsk Krai.
I usually try to keep a 500ml bottle of local birch syrup in the fridge for company from back east.

The holes are not very deeply drilled. The reason is that wood water sap is moving _only_ in the outermost 10 - 30 growth rings.

 

[northumbriman]

This is an interesting thread. I am not a regular "tapper". My first experience was while pitching a wild camp and accidentally snapping a small branch from a birch. It was running freely in seconds so rather than waste it I caught it in a billy for a morning drink. I personally think the level of damage that results will depend on all the variables, climate, health of the tee, level of stress factors like bacteria and insects and all the other variables mentioned in the thread. The more a tree has to cope with the less likely it is to survive. I suppose we need to minimize our impact as far as possible as with any of our pursuits in the natural world.

 

[stuart f]

Hi folks, i have not posted anything for a while, but after reading through this thread, i found a short film on YouTube about a commercial tapper of Birch trees, i was interested to see he uses a drill to insert taps. Don't know if it will contribute to the thread, but it gives the perspective of a Birch tapper rather than a Maple tapper.
[video=youtube;XD63_wXBG1s]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XD63_wXBG1s[/video]

Cheers Stuart.