The queen then exercises a personal control over each egg as she deposits it, but, unless interfered with by irregular circumstances, she _adapts_ her will to the cells and _chooses_ the cells according to the requirements of the hive. But when both drones and workers are in requisition she lays her eggs in each class of cells just as she comes to them, as to which fact the Baron gives abundant evidence, having in one instance observed a queen make no fewer than five changes in a day from worker to drone cells or _vice versa_ without any intermission. Inconsistent as it may appear, she also herself deposits in royal cells the eggs which are to hatch into her rivals--that is, when these cells have been prepared with a view to swarming;--for the preponderance of argument goes against the belief that eggs are ever removed into these by the workers.[13] In addition to determining the sex she is further capable of regulating to a large extent the total number of eggs she lays, and thus of modifying the growth of the population with the character of the season and the condition of the colony; thus a queen that has been transferred from a weak to a strong hive has been know to vary in two or three days from no eggs at all to two thousand a day. She lays during some ten months of the year, suspending the process in November and December. For her first season she lays almost exclusively worker eggs. [Footnote 13: The eggs when once deposited adhere to the cells and could not be removed without ruining them; but occasionally when fresh laid they stick to the body of the queen, or even of a worker. Queenless stocks sometimes in their temporary insanity start new queen cells without thinking where the eggs are to come from; but these will remain empty unless some fertile worker' tries her skill.]