Hi, physics major here.

 

The Sun, and to  a much, much greater extent, the Moon, have a combined
gravitational impact averaging out to about 2 micro-meters per second
squared, as compared to the gravitational attraction of the Earth itself,
which is roughly 10 meters per second squared.  Or, as they said in school,
"32 feet per second per second".  

 

The sun and moon's impact is only one 5-millionth of the force of Earth's
own gravitational impact at Earth's surface.  This is going to be swamped
out by the local variations in "apparent gravity" of about 7% of the total,
as the Earth is not equally dense everywhere, nor is it a perfect sphere.  

 

Then there's also elevation, less gravity on high mountains deceasing by
about 0.1% per 1000 meters of height above sea level, and Latitude, as the
Earth is an "oblate spheroid", a physio-ball that has been sat upon by a fat
man, so the rotation is faster at the equator, as the equator has to rotate
at the same speed as the artic, but make a larger circle, so the centrifugal
force will counteract the gravity, as the speed of the Earth's rotation
(1000 miles an hour!) tends to try to throw you off the surface of the
planet, while the gravitational attraction pulls you down.

 

The Earth's diameter is so tiny as compared to the Sun-Earth distance that
the impact of the Sun on the Earth's gravity is only about 0.03 times the
Moon's force.  (That one I had to go to the bookshelf to look up, I forgot
the exact fraction. The sun is about 400 moon distances from Earth, but
packs 175 times the gravitational punch of the moon at point-blank range.
Gravitational attraction decreases with the square of the distance, just
like radio wave signal strength, so the distance takes a toll here.)

 

So, can bees detect gravity?  Space shuttle experiments in comb building
said "yes".  But can they make use of the Sun's impact on gravity to tell
the season?  Doubtful.  They lack the mass to be able to experience the
force differential.

 

OK, I'm done, you can wake up now. :)

 

 


             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html