Maple sugaring in Lévis, Quebec
- Sap starts
- Mar 21
- producers' record
- Season ends
- Apr 24
- about 5 weeks
- Sap days / season
- 24.5
- 1991–2025 average
- Taps, 2021
- withheld
- by Statistics Canada
Sap-flow outlook at Lévis right now
Full Quebec forecast →Forecast for Lévis, QC
Updated Oct 7, 11:30 AM EDT
Off-season for now. Sap needs freezing nights, and none are in sight. Lévis's season usually opens around March 21, which is 165 days away.
No freeze-thaw days in the forecast
freeze thaw 0 °C
- ThuOct 87° / 14°No refreeze forecast
- FriOct 96° / 12°No refreeze forecast
- SatOct 102° / 11°No refreeze forecast
- SunOct 115° / 18°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 Lévis
Year-to-year spread
- Opening signal
- Median Mar 28; the middle half of seasons fell between Mar 24 and Mar 31. Earliest Mar 9 (2010), latest Apr 8 (1998).
- Closing signal
- Median Apr 25; middle half between Apr 21 and Apr 30. Earliest Apr 5 (2021), latest May 5 (1992).
- Sap days by month
- Dec10%Jan4%Feb7%Mar32%Apr42%May4%
35 seasons of sap weather
Lévis seasons, 1991–2025
Maple production
Lévis 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 40 in Lévis; in 2016, 22 farms and 42,135 taps.
Over the five years the farm count changed +82%. 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 | 40E | withheld by Statistics Canada |
| 2016 | 22 | 42,135 |
- E Statistics Canada quality grade: use with caution.
- "Withheld by Statistics Canada": Statistics Canada suppressed the value as too unreliable to publish (F). The farm count is still published.
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 Appalaches-Beauce-Lotbinière 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
- 24
- under the joint marketing plan
- Taps
- 61,063
- as printed
- Annual production
- 228,376 lb
- estimate, pounds of syrup
- Value
- $765,058
- Canadian dollars
Taps by forest ownership
Private forest 100%Public forest 0%
- PPAQ prints this block as “Hors MRC – Lévis”.
- Annual production is PPAQ's estimate (Groupe AGÉCO's yield estimate applied to the taps), not a measured harvest. Appalaches-Beauce-Lotbinière sheet (PDF, French)
Nearby
Neighboring maple divisions
3 km · Québec
Québec
Sap ~Mar 19 – Apr 23 · 52 farms
10 km · Boischatel
La Côte-de-Beaupré
Sap ~Mar 22 – Apr 25 · 33 farms
12 km · Saint-Pierre-de-l'Île-d'Orléans
L'Île-d'Orléans
Sap ~Mar 21 – Apr 24 · 111,550 taps
15 km · Saint-Henri
Bellechasse
Sap ~Mar 20 – Apr 24 · 2,161,913 taps
22 km · Sainte-Brigitte-de-Laval
La Jacques-Cartier
Sap ~Mar 26 – Apr 30 · 13 farms
33 km · Saint-Apollinaire
Lotbinière
Sap ~Mar 20 – Apr 24 · 1,310,593 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 Lévis, the division's most populous municipality in the 2021 Census; the cell sits at 80 m (262 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 : Appalaches-Beauce-Lotbinière · 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
Lévis sugaring questions
- When should I tap maple trees in Lévis, Quebec?
- In a typical year the sap starts running around March 21 near Lévis 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 9 and as late as Apr 8.
- How much maple syrup does Lévis produce?
- Statistics Canada doesn't publish syrup volume by census division. Its 2021 Census of Agriculture counted 40 farms reporting maple taps in Lévis; the tap count was withheld by Statistics Canada. Separately, the PPAQ's 2026 fact sheet for the Appalaches-Beauce-Lotbinière region estimates annual production at 228,376 lb of syrup from 61,063 taps.
- How many sap days does Lévis get in a season?
- On average 24.5 freeze-thaw sap days from December through May at Lévis, of which about 10.6 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 (39 sap days); the leanest was 2015 (13).
- Where do these dates come from?
- From 35 seasons of daily high and low temperatures at Lévis (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.


