capped and static queen cell

Hi all;

I overwintered a few nucs and was very happy they made it.
This spring though I was busy and one of them (2 nucs tall) got packed and made a few queen cells.

No problem, I thought. I have this neat queen castle I can use, keep my 5 frame nucs free for regular splits, and move things along later.
And I love to get queens from stock that made it through a tough winter.

I had 2 frames with _capped_ queen cells. They were pretty new but a little tan. I put the frame that had one (or more) queen cells with a feeder frame in each of 2 separate sections in the queen castle box.

That was easily 2.5 weeks back. I damaged a couple of the queen cells on one frame when placing the frame, but checking a few days later, the bees had sealed them again. I'd read you could carefully open a capped queen cell to check on it and they would do that.

The bees are doing fine/ seem happy, don't seem stressed or depressed like a failing group does. Are still walking on the queen cells when I check on them. However, its WELL past the time the cells should have emerged.. 9 days at longest once it is capped, right?

If these were dead cells now, I would expect the bees to rip them out. Do they really leave them alone in the circumstances I have created here?

Thank you;