Bacterial infection. I thought it was viral. I was wrong. Only took 2 days from hurting a bit to popping noises, followed by oozing nasty green stuff from my ear 'oles. No fever to clue me in, but my doctor was very thorough, and I am already feeling better on “nuclear bomb” antibiotics tonight. Yes it hurt quite a lot before popping, but life hurts all the time as we get older, right? 
Anyhow, now I feel even more empathy with all of the kids that I treated with same condition. 
17 days is is just 1 more day than queens take to form. From what I understand hives swarm when the first queen cells get capped normally. So if all is according to plan some queens have possibly emerged- but that still doesn’t give them much time to get mated and start laying.
I can’t fully identify any queen cells from your pictures but it does look like maybe some on the bottom of the frames. are you 100% sure you saw capped queen cells? If there were lots on various frames you could easily make a split now assuming you have enough bees- which by that bearding it looks like maybe you do.
Oh dear, you poor thing!! Hope you feel better soon 
Hi Vince, to me it looks like those queen cells have hatched so either there is a young queen in there but you missed her or she was out on a mating flight (which is still possible) or there is no queen. Did you see any eggs? I use a head torch in times like these and check all the cells thoroughly.
Those on the bottom of the frame don’t look like new queen cells Vince, I would be inclined to donate a fresh frame of eggs with nurse bee and put plenty of smoke into the hive so that the nurse bees are accepted, do that weekly till when you do an inspection there are eggs and new brood, I think the hive is queenless from the pics.
Regards
I am not sure about capped. There was so many on several different frames. Most I saw looked to be open
Where would I get a fresh frame of eggs?
did they look torn open? It sounds like you have a virgin queen running around. I’ve never been able to identify one at that stage- they are not as big as later and look more like standard workers. Apparently it’s a good idea to leave them alone as much as possible during during this period.
Sorry Vince, I thought you had two hives and see now that you have one. I think you need help from a local bee group to check the status of your hive by one of their members with experience. Maybe they can help you to figure out the true status of you hive, in my opinion there is no queen in the hive and if let go you will finish up with a laying worker producing only drones and you need help before you get to that position.
Maybe someone on the forum lives in you area, if not you need help from a bee club or an apiarist.
Good luck and let us know how you go.
Thanks JeffH.
I’m a newbee. Just at 11 months of beekeeping, starting with a with a package of bees, it was really lovely to read and see your response from May’18. Whilst I read quite a bit before starting and am a member of our local ABA, (& meetings for that have all been messed up due to of COVID restrictions,) it’s still a bit like when I was a child and read all about the technical aspects of riding, not ever having done so myself; it didn’t make me a rider. incidentally I’m glad you reaffirmed the lemon balm theory, because when I mentioned reading about it at one of the 1st ABA meetings they looked at me as though I was blowing green smoke out of my nostrils, and flippently told me they’d never heard of it.
My one hive was very strong & I could see the writing on the wall, suspecting the hive was about to swarm. It consists of 1 brood box (10 frame) & an ideal, then a queen excluder & a super. It looked like time to do a split but we missed the boat in getting the new brood box for various reasons including that it was a long weekend. The fact is that the “girls” swarmed while hubby was out buying the new setup on Wednesday… about 8 meters into a spiky conifer type tree. stayed 2 hours and said goodbye.
My question now is: how long before I open up my hive and bother the remaining colony. They do not “sound” queenless. I’m familiar with their normal quiet buzz as I sit with them for about 10 minutes most days. There are ample bees still in the colony, (not crowded,) with normal activity at the entrance and they are busy in the super where there is still ample honey… I have viewing windows in the super. (I’ve seen a queenless colony that was being requeened down at the UNI and they definitely had a different sound to their buzz.) Mine sound calm.
Jeff is no longer on the forum Val, ho got kicked off for his opinion to avoid an extraction causing flooding in the hive.
There is no reason you can’t do a check now to confirm there is a capped queen cell in the hive if you want to do that but till the new queen emerges, mated and is laying the colony could be better left left alone as they may be feeling a little fragile in temperament.
When I was at Richmond and hives at Grose Vale, Glossodia and Kurmond as well I used to do preemptive Spring splits in early September as soon as the August Westerly winds died out.
Does the UNI still have an apiary there?, when I lived there it was very much an agriculture college rather than a university…
Cheers
So, Hi Peter.
Yes, I’m in the Hawkesbury very close to the old “Blood & Mustard”.
The Uni has some hives where the old orange orchards were. Londonderry Rd side.
and on the Richmond Rd side, up Piggery Lane, there is the Earthcare Center. That’s where the Hawkesbury Branch of the ABA were meeting until the COVID thing. Attended 2 or 3 meetings there before they went Zoom. I have done one ZOOM meeting this year and I find it awkward. The ABA have 3 hives there, one with a “flow” on top for comparison and I guess the ease of being able to peek in the windows of windy days.
An update on my previous entry. I went out to check my hive right after typing my last entry and there was a lot of drone activity. Is this normal “spring fever” (girl hunting,) or do you think there is cause for concern?
I lived in Dight St near Icely Park then moved to Potts St off Southee Rd when Hobartville was developed for housing. The college used to have about 40 hives under the Pecan Trees on Southee Rd.
Drone number will increase in the Spring but they will be of no benefit for your hive, a queen won’t mate with a drone from the same hive — incest isn’t allowed among bees. In Autumn the workers will kick out all but a few younger drones. It is just a seasonal event but a hive with foundation will have less drones than a foundationless hive, I’m far from a lover of foundationless frames because of more drones, wonky comb and the time taken for the bees to make the extra wax. It takes 6kg of honey consumed by the bees to make 1kg of wax.
I was a semi-commercial bee keeper when I lived there with 250 hives, up here I’m am addicted to it as a hobby with 50 hives.
Cheers Val.
Thanks Peter.
You are a wealth of information. You are kind to share your expertise & I appreciate that very much. Didn’t know about the honey to wax production ratio. 50 hives is quite a “hobby”.
So, by lots of drone activity, I meant they were leaving in droves for about 40 minutes, and then all was calm again, with the “girls” just getting on with things as usual.
Cheers Val
I don’t know what time of day it was for you, but drones usually leave the hive early afternoon to go to a local Drone Congregation Area (DCA). Virgin queens from other hives leave about the same time to meet up with as many boys as possible in the DCA.
Just to muddy the waters a bit, newly emerged bees do “orientation flights” in crazy figure of 8 patterns between about 1 and 3pm too. These are partly cleansing flights, and partly enabling them to build up a memory of the landscape around their home. 
Drones do orientation flights to memorize where home is but soon fly further to look for a queen to mate with. Given that there could be up to 2000 bees emerging each day if there is enough space in the hive for brood and that orientation flight usually happen for 30/40 minutes I wonder if what your seeing is orientation and cleansing flights. Worker bees doing orientation flights to begin can be no further than a few meters from the hives entrance then increases in distance each day.
If what your seeing happens from nothing to really a huge activity then returns to normal activity quickly I would be thinking that is orientation flights. I recall seeing that in the Hawkesbury from mid morning to mid afternoon.
I guess bee keeping for me is now a hobby I’m addicted to, Every day I’m doing something bee related but still have enough time to help others along the journey as well.
Cheers
Hi Dawn.
Thanks for your response.
Yes, it was around lunch time, 26 degrees C, and definitely drones.
Our 1st swarm was large and I have heard that 2ndary swarms can leave the primary colony weak. We plan on going in for an inspection next weekend. Saturday will be 10 days from the initial swarm. Hoping the only one. We were hoping to do a split. Don’t want to miss the boat next time they build up. Bearding prior to swarming had been quite modest compared to what we’d seen last summer when it was hot, and only for two days, and they were basically just hanging out, (almost blocking entry for those who were working,) & I only noticed gorging the afternoon before. The hive was definitely crowded though
Our remaining colony seems to be behaving normally. Quiet, continuing as normal, & for the first time beginning to wax up the rims of the flow cells.
It’s a perfect spring day, 24 degrees C, quite still, with an expected 28 degrees today. I will check for drone activity again around lunch time.
Our hive is beneath quite a huge tree, a hackberry which was loaded with tiny blossoms at the start of the season. The hive gets morning and afternoon sun, shade all day and filtered light through bare branches in winter.
Regards Val.
Great hobby Peter.
So, the drones did fly out (& some back) starting at 1250 today. Only 1 to 3 coming out at a time. Didn’t get that big drone buzz I’ve seen before, like yesterday when the agitation level was pretty extreme.
All things calm at the “fort”.
Since the swarm last Wednesday, the “girls” have started waxing the silicone of the flow cells. That’s a first, even though the flow was full at the end of last season.
We will be checking the hive on Saturday, weather permitting, at your suggestion of 10 days from swarming. Watching them closely though for numbers as we would like to do a split. when they are ready.
regards Val
That is all I see, drones seem to be secretive about what they are getting up to 
I’m thinking your explaining capping of the cells with wax. I would tend to ignore events of last year as a sort of a ‘one off’ because of the drought, smoke and bush fires especially on the Eastern states. Up here last Summer I was feeding my hives syrup and very few capped cells of honey. Heaps of trees flowering as usual but with no rainfall for 6 months the flowers didn’t contain any nectar.
Doing a split is much better than having a hive swarm.
Cheers Val
Yes Peter.
The air was hot, dry & smokey almost all that long summer, and our package of bees was the last of a batch on a pallet in the sun where we had bought the brood box etc… The plan had been to set everything up at home and organise a nuc. So many of the bees in the packages were dead, & we were told they were on ordered & awaiting pick up; but, there was one spare if we wanted it. The woman said she’d have to get “rid” of them the next day. “White knight syndrome” took over and we were suddenly novice beekeepers googling how the install a package. I fed them sugar syrup for longer than most literature says; more out of intuition because it was so dry, I was sure any nectar was as dried up as blossoms which were like little crisps. I was glad I did because someone at the ABA who acquired their bee package a day before us, (who already had other hives,) fed their’s for only a couple of weeks and the bees could not build a strong enough colony to support themselves. The beek told us they all died and even the wax frames melted. So glad I went on judging the conditions rather than the advice I was given on that occasion.
Cheers Val