Maple sugaring in Beauce-Sartigan, Quebec
- Sap starts
- Mar 16
- producers' record
- Season ends
- Apr 24
- about 6 weeks
- Sap days / season
- 36.4
- 1991–2025 average
- Taps, 2021
- 2.9 million
- #4 of 61 in QC
Sap-flow outlook at Saint-Georges right now
Full Quebec forecast →Forecast for Saint-Georges, QC
Updated Oct 7, 11:30 AM EDT
Off-season for now. Sap needs freezing nights, and none are in sight. Beauce-Sartigan's season usually opens around March 16, which is 160 days away.
No freeze-thaw days in the forecast
freeze thaw 0 °C
- ThuOct 89° / 13°No refreeze forecast
- FriOct 97° / 12°No refreeze forecast
- SatOct 101° / 10°No refreeze forecast
- SunOct 114° / 19°No refreeze forecast
- MonOct 1211° / 15°No refreeze forecast
- TueOct 138° / 12°No refreeze forecast
Data: Environment and Climate Change Canada. Verdicts use freeze-thaw thresholds from maple field research; your woods may run a little differently.
When the sap runs
The sugaring calendar at Saint-Georges
Year-to-year spread
- Opening signal
- Median Mar 23; the middle half of seasons fell between Mar 21 and Mar 28. Earliest Mar 4 (2010), latest Apr 3 (1997).
- Closing signal
- Median Apr 25; middle half between Apr 19 and Apr 30. Earliest Mar 28 (2010), latest May 5 (1997).
- Sap days by month
- Dec11%Jan5%Feb10%Mar28%Apr37%May9%
35 seasons of sap weather
Beauce-Sartigan seasons, 1991–2025
Maple production
Beauce-Sartigan in the Census of Agriculture
Statistics Canada counts the farms that report maple taps in its Census of Agriculture every five years. In 2021 it counted 538 in Beauce-Sartigan, with 2,866,417 taps; in 2016, 465 farms and 2,405,629 taps. Among Quebec's 61 census divisions with a published tap count, Beauce-Sartigan ranks 4th, and 4th of the 94 in this atlas.
Over the five years the farm count changed +16% and taps +19%. Statistics Canada cautions that 2021 and 2016 are not strictly comparable: the census-farm definition changed in 2021, and farms were assigned to their main location more strictly.
Statistics Canada doesn't publish syrup volume by census division, so the Canadian pages show farms and taps, not gallons or litres.
| Census year | Farms reporting taps | Taps |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 538 | 2,866,417 |
| 2016 | 465 | 2,405,629 |
A separate, newer source
PPAQ regional fact sheet, 2026
The Producteurs et productrices acéricoles du Québec (PPAQ) publish a fact sheet for each sugaring region, with figures for every MRC. These are from the 2026 Beauce sheet. They count enterprises registered under the joint marketing plan, by where the sugarbush is; the census above counts 2021 farms by their main location. The two sit side by side here and are never added together.
- Enterprises
- 580
- under the joint marketing plan
- Taps
- 2.9 million
- rounded, as printed
- Annual production
- 11.0 million lb
- estimate, pounds of syrup
- Value
- $37.1 million
- Canadian dollars
Taps by forest ownership
Private forest 87%Public forest 13%
- Figures in millions are rounded to a tenth, as PPAQ printed them.
- Annual production is PPAQ's estimate (Groupe AGÉCO's yield estimate applied to the taps), not a measured harvest. Beauce sheet (PDF, French)
Nearby
Neighboring maple divisions
15 km · Beauceville
Robert-Cliche
Sap ~Mar 16 – Apr 23 · 1,078,782 taps
34 km · Lac-Etchemin
Les Etchemins
Sap ~Mar 23 – Apr 29 · 1,738,699 taps
44 km · Sainte-Marie
La Nouvelle-Beauce
Sap ~Mar 18 – Apr 24 · 1,222,914 taps
49 km · Thetford Mines
Les Appalaches
Sap ~Mar 17 – Apr 24 · 3,508,831 taps
61 km · Lac-Mégantic
Le Granit
Sap ~Mar 19 – Apr 24 · 5,056,082 taps
72 km · Saint-Henri
Bellechasse
Sap ~Mar 20 – Apr 24 · 2,161,913 taps
About these numbers
The season dates are estimated from 35 seasons of daily high and low temperatures for the Daymet 1-km grid cell at Saint-Georges, the division's most populous municipality in the 2021 Census; the cell sits at 225 m (738 ft). Each day is scored with the same freeze-thaw rule as our live forecast: a sap day is an overnight low under −1 °C (30.2 °F) followed by an afternoon high over +3 °C (37.4 °F). A season's closing signal is the last sap day before accumulated warmth reaches a threshold, and the opening signal sits 35 days before that, never earlier than the first real freeze-thaw week. The rule was calibrated on 117 state-seasons of USDA-reported dates in the US and is applied here unchanged. In Quebec it reproduces the pattern between regions in producers' reported seasons (Houle et al. 2015), and the typical dates are anchored to that record. Production figures are copied from Statistics Canada as published; the PPAQ figures, from its 2026 regional fact sheet, are shown separately. Full method, the Daymet checks and the Quebec validation → Run a sugarhouse here? Put this sap forecast on your own website →
Sources · 9
- 1.Maple taps, Census of Agriculture, 2021 (Table 32-10-0362-01) · Statistics Canada
- 2.Maple taps, Census of Agriculture, 2011 and 2016 (Table 32-10-0423-01) · Statistics Canada
- 3.Fiche région 2026 : Beauce · Producteurs et productrices acéricoles du Québec
- 4.Daymet: Daily Surface Weather Data on a 1-km Grid for North America, Version 4 R1 · ORNL DAAC
- 5.Impacts of climate change on the timing of the production season of maple syrup in eastern Canada (PLOS ONE 10(12): e0144844, 2015) · Houle et al.
- 6.Sap flow in sugar maple: timing and weather drivers (Frontiers in Agronomy, 2025) · de Lima Santos et al.
Show 3 moreShow fewer
- 7.2021 Census cartographic boundary files (census divisions, population centres) · Statistics Canada
- 8.Population and dwelling counts, 2021 Census (Tables 98-10-0002-01 and 98-10-0011-01) · Statistics Canada
- 9.GeoNames geographical database (CA) · GeoNames
Licences and attribution
- Adapted from Statistics Canada, Census of Agriculture 2021 and 2016 (Tables 32-10-0362-01 and 32-10-0423-01), 2021 Census population and dwelling counts (Tables 98-10-0002-01 and 98-10-0011-01) and 2021 Census cartographic boundary files. This does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada of this product.
- Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada.
- Thornton, M.M., R. Shrestha, Y. Wei, P.E. Thornton, S-C. Kao, and B.E. Wilson. 2022. Daymet: Daily Surface Weather Data on a 1-km Grid for North America, Version 4 R1. ORNL DAAC, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA. https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/2129
- Place coordinates: GeoNames (geonames.org), CC BY 4.0.
- Québec MRC figures: Producteurs et productrices acéricoles du Québec, Fiches région 2026 (production estimates from Groupe AGÉCO).
FAQ
Beauce-Sartigan sugaring questions
- When should I tap maple trees in Beauce-Sartigan, Quebec?
- In a typical year the sap starts running around March 16 near Saint-Georges and the season winds down around April 24. Have your taps in a day or two before the first forecast string of nights below −1 °C and days above +3 °C. In the past 35 seasons the weather signal came as early as Mar 4 and as late as Apr 3.
- How much maple syrup does Beauce-Sartigan produce?
- Statistics Canada doesn't publish syrup volume by census division. Its 2021 Census of Agriculture counted 538 farms reporting 2,866,417 maple taps in Beauce-Sartigan, number 4 of 61 Quebec divisions with a published count. Separately, the PPAQ's 2026 fact sheet for the Beauce region estimates annual production at 11.0 million lb of syrup from 2.9 million taps.
- How many sap days does Beauce-Sartigan get in a season?
- On average 36.4 freeze-thaw sap days from December through May at Saint-Georges, of which about 9.9 are textbook days with a night between about −7 and −2 °C and a day between 4 and 9 °C. The best season since 1991 was 2020 (52 sap days); the leanest was 2015 (18).
- Where do these dates come from?
- From 35 seasons of daily high and low temperatures at Saint-Georges (Daymet 1-km grid), scored with the same freeze-thaw rule as our live forecast. In Quebec they are anchored to producers' reported season in the region (Houle et al. 2015, 1999–2011). They describe a typical year at one point in the division; your sugarbush, slope and elevation can shift them by days.


