Single Male Flower- How much damage could that have done?

I found a single male flower that had opened overnight and it was in full bloom with petals open and had obviously released what little pollen it had in it.
The male flower was on a tiny little plant that I've been growing on 12/12 from seed and had hermied overnight.
Unfortunately, I had it right smack bang in the middle of five nearly finished females all of which are at about their eighth week of flower.
The hairs on these females are only just beginning to turn brown and I don't want to harvest them for another week (at least) so that they will be closer to or at their peak. It's an unknown bag seed which I suspect may be Himalayan Gold.
My questions are;

1.) I wonder how many buds a single male flower is capable of pollinating and
2.) whether I should cut them all now to stop the formation of any seeds?

I was considering waiting for just a week and checking the buds for signs of seed formation as it really seems a waste to take them all when they have such a short while to go before they're ready and they may not have actually been affected by the pollen.
Many thanks in advance for your advice.

harvest on trichomes, not hairs. You'll be fine, no reason to freak out, maybe a few seeds a plant aint gonna kill your grows potential. it didnt hermie overnight if it was fully open btw.

darkdestruction420 said:

harvest on trichomes, not hairs. You'll be fine, no reason to freak out, maybe a few seeds a plant aint gonna kill your grows potential. it didnt hermie overnight if it was fully open btw.

Click to expand...

Yes, it couldn't really hermie that quick. I knew I was exaggerating there, sorry.
I thought that it looked alright yesterday when I sort of half saw it from amongst the others but I really didn't give it a thorough inspection. I just thought 'Ah, I can see some white hairs so it should be still alright' which obviously it wasn't!
As far as judging from trichomes goes, without a decent magnifier I have been using
https://www.rollitup.org/harvesting-curing/328642-want-know-if-your-plants.html
to try and educate myself in diagnosing the ripeness of the buds and I also saw this;


In a post by donnieosmond that I thought was a reliable indicator.

It's not. its rare to have a plant ready in under 8 weeks and most take 10-12 weeks indica and bout 14-16 weeks for sativa. Pistils die and are replaced throughout the plants life cycle. If you cant get a cheap 8 dollar microscope for some reason i will show you this from fdd's harvest tutorial. He makes it quite obvious.
we will start with ripeness. most people say to check your trichromes with 30X magnification. i have other ways. when buds are done they look "done". the appearance of the bud changes. the leaves start to hook upwards and become hard and crispy. the calyxes will swell and the hairs will turn brown. you can see a golden tinge to the bud leaves. this is the amber crystals. they start to turn amber on the leaves first.



not ready..........





ready.......






notice the difference? it's pretty easy to see once it occurs.

Yes, I can see the difference and thanks for the advice.
I had actually seen those pictures before on that very same harvest tutorial thread and was hoping to wait until the buds looked just as ripe as they do there, but the presence of the male flower freaked me into thinking that they would stop producing bud growth and start only forming seeds if they had been heavily fertilised.
The times you've quoted are much longer than I usually see quoted on seed companies web sites.
Most of the growers on here post much shorter finishing times than 10-16 weeks also.
I want them to be completely ripe when I harvest.
I just read on another site an article by Jay Chavez:
http://www.articlesbase.com/hobbies-articles/tips-to-remember-when-harvesting-marijuana-3498763.html
which states that plants should be harvested immediately before the end of their night cycle and in always in the dark?

I would wait.They may still need 2-3 wks before ready.Just keep an eye on em,but with them being at 8 wks,should be minimal damage.Before I harvest, I leave em in darkness for about 36-48 hrs.