Maple syrup is a natural and very unique product.  It is only made in Eastern Canada and North-eastern USA from the sap of sugar maple and black maple trees. 

As spring approaches sugar makers take to maple forests (sugar bushes) to tap the maple trees. A drill is used to make a small hole in the tree  from which the tree sap flows in the warm spring days.  Ideal weather for sap production is +4 degrees in the day and below freezing at night.  At the end of the day the sap is collected and brought to a sugar camp to be boiled on an evaporator .  Water is boiled out of the sap to concentrate the natural sugars.  After boiling for some time, the sap thickens to a darker, sweeter maple syrup.

The most modern and widely used method of collecting maple sap is plastic pipeline.  A network of this pipeline takes the sap from the tree to the sugar camp to be boiled .   The use of pipeline allows sugar makers to tap more trees with less labour.  This modern sugar camp boils the sap from 13,500 maple taps.  The large evaporators  boil up to 45000 liters of maple sap per day during the maple season (March-April).  The steam from the water being boiled away from the sap fills the sugar camp with a warm sweet maple aroma.  A dipper is still used along with other instruments to measure the sweetness of the sap to know when the boiling process is finished.  At a 66 percent sugar content the maple syrup is ready to be drawn off and filtered .  The pure maple syrup is then packaged into containers to be sold, made into maple sugar candy, maple cream, or maple taffy-on-snow.