On a sunny morning in late February, a group of students from the UConn Forest Crew work through the sugar maple stand, affixing taps and lines to the trees, and then running them back to a storage tank.

They are working alongside Tom Worthley, a UConn Extension forestry educator, preparing the sugar bush for the upcoming sap season. The group is preparing the trees for the warm days and cold nights that prompt the sugar maple trees (Acer saccharum) to produce sap for transformation into maple syrup’s golden goodness.

Each gallon of maple syrup requires about 40 gallons of sap, creating a hive of activity for the weeks-long sap season each year.

“I’m involved because of the student experience and to promote trees and forests to people around the state, creating materials like maple syrup that link people to the resource. There’s also a lot of satisfaction that comes from having something you grew or made and can enjoy later,” Worthley says.

Connecticut is in the heart of the sugar maple range and ranks eleventh nationally in maple syrup production. The UConn Sugar House is one of many throughout the state offering a high-quality and delicious product each year.

Maple syrup production in the United States increased in 2024, with the highest yield from the past 25 years, due in part to an increased number of taps and favorable weather conditions.

Despite strong promotional campaigns from Vermont, New York, and Canada, once sap is syrup, it’s basically impossible to tell where it came from. As long as the sugar producer uses high-quality production methods, all of these syrups will taste about the same.

“All the more reason to support Connecticut maple producers,” says Worthley.

The timeless tradition began with Indigenous cultures in North America, who moved their families to a sugar bush, or stand of sugar maple trees, in late winter as the snow began to melt.

The sap’s sweetness was likely discovered by sap icicles on the trees, and this led to collecting sap for use throughout the year. Without pots for boiling, the Indigenous people made three types of sugar instead, and later the tradition evolved to syrup production.

UConn’s sugar house is tucked in behind the Farm Services buildings, near where the Woodsmen Teams maintain their timber mill and practice yard.

Extension professionals, faculty from the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, and UConn students have made syrup here for over 30 years, preparing the next generation of maple producers and selling their syrup to support the sugar house and equipment.

“Our student-run maple program illustrates one of the great benefits that the UConn Forest provides to our campus community, the hands-on, practical educational experiences that our students can engage in,” says Robert Fahey, Goerge F. Cloutier Professor in Forestry. “Through work experiences and internships we are able to provide training that gives our students the technical skills they need as well as real-world experience conducting and managing forest-related activities such as maple-syrup production, creating value-added wood products, and trails and recreation management.”

For some students, this is just one element of their “forest education.”

“It’s exciting to learn what the forest is capable of, how we utilize forests, and that it’s not just by cutting them down,” says Zach Placzek ’25 (CAHNR). Placzek’s desire to protect the forest led him to seek certification to fight fires, and he is working with the UConn fire chief to help establish a controlled burn operation to control invasive species in a recently harvested area of the forest.

The 2,100-acre UConn Forest has several sugar bushes, and the students rest a sugar bush and use another at times as part of their forest stewardship. Sugar maple trees thrive on north facing slopes with deep soils, and while the UConn Forest has several such locations, Worthley also mentions growing more sugar maple trees, and perhaps developing or cultivating a stand closer to the sugar house.

“The ability to produce maple syrup locally in Connecticut is one of the many positive benefits created by living in a well-forested state” says Amy Harder, associate dean for Extension. “Many producers also benefit from integrating agritourism into their operations so the public can see, smell, and taste the entire experience – something my family loves to do!”

Sap runs just below the bark on sunny days, dripping from the taps into the buckets or lines affixed to each tree. Once the sap really starts running, the students need to empty the tank at the sugar bush daily. It’s transported back to the sugar house on campus in their 60-gallon transfer tank and pumped into another tank outside the sugar house. Gravity feeds the sap into the evaporator inside the house.

The wood-fired pans are heated to 219 degrees Fahrenheit, boiling the water out of the sap, with steam rising through the vent in the sugar house’s roof. Sap becomes syrup as the water evaporates and the sugar content increases. Next, it’s filtered to remove any solids and then reheated to over 180 degrees Fahrenheit. Bottles are carefully filled with the 180-degree sap and turned upside down to seal the lids.

Maple syrup comes in four colors, Golden, Amber, Dark, and Very Dark. Lighter syrup – golden and amber – is from early sap and has a milder flavor. The lighter colors are often the syrup of choice for breakfast foods, added to coffee, or drizzled over ice cream. Later season sap is darker because it has more sugars in it, and the sugars make the darker syrup with its robust flavor. Many people use darker syrups for baking and cooking, although some prefer this flavor on breakfast foods.

Sap season wraps up by the end of March, sometimes earlier if the weather warms faster than expected. The students clean the equipment and conduct any needed repairs or maintenance on the equipment before storing it for next year. UConn’s 30-year-old evaporator is in its last season, and the off-season challenge this year is fundraising to replace it.

“For myself, being a researcher and doing a lot of outreach work with the local professional foresters, I find immense value in having this living lecture hall to teach from,” says Amanda Bunce, a Ph.D. student studying tree biomechanics and silviculture. “Students do much better learning in the real thing than from a classroom, and I find it so much easier to share my own enthusiasm for ecology when we’re out in it.”

Find a Sugar House near you in Connecticut by visiting Connecticut Grown. 

This work relates to CAHNR’s Strategic Vision areas of Advancing Adaptation and Resilience in a Changing Climate and Fostering Sustainable Landscapes at the Urban-Rural Interface.

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