Thanks for the pictures - It is really hard to say, without being there/ seeing the hive.  They definately were not short on protein.  

1) Was it a 5 frame nuc that you installed into a 8 or 10 frame hive? 

2) When you installed, you just transferred all the frames, keeping the new hive open?  And did the process go smoothly? Did you see the queen? 

3) were you feeding syrup?  Did you have the patties on their the whole time? 

4) There are three photos of one side of one brood frame.  What was on the rest of the frames (There should be 10 sides to look at, and we see 2)? I don't need photos of all, but descriptions would be good, or another photo of a brood frame?

5) What do you mean by "looking weak?". It is really useful to report "frames of bees," or an example of cluster size (e.g."softball size cluster").

6) This is the big one: What do you mean "I believe" new eggs and larvae?  This woudl really be the one that answers a lot - when the last time you saw the queen, and signs of her laying. If you really did see here/ good eggs on the 8th,then that would be very different. 

 One thing I am thinking of is that the queen got damaged in transport/ transfer - in which case, you would only see capped brood by this point, and the bees could have left to join your package hive. 

The other reasons that I have seen nucs abscond are heat (they got too crowded), starvation ( I can't tell if there is nectar/ syrup in the frames), or really bad disease. It could also be a pesticide issue, but that his hard to tell.  

My questions above will help look into the queen/ heat/ food first. 

I think that your email was cut off - I don't see any responses in red.  

We aren't set up to do house calls, unfortunately. I agree that it would be a great service, and I'd love for us to have the resources for us to hire someone to allow us to take on that role.  

Thanks for the pictures - It is really hard to say, without being there/ seeing the hive. They definitely were not short on protein.

1) Was it a 5 frame nuc that you installed into an 8 or 10 frame hive? It was a 5 frame nuc going into a 10 frame hive. We put the new frames from the nuc between the hive's existing frames.

2) When you installed, you just transferred all the frames, keeping the new hive open? And did the process go smoothly? Did you see the queen? We did not see the queen during the transfer process. We knew we were looking for a much larger bee but never actually saw her. We thought the transfer went smoothly. It was quick

3) were you feeding syrup? Did you have the patties on there the whole time? We installed the nuc on April 25 and a Boardman sugar-water feeder on 4/26. We started the patties about a week later. Here is a picture of bees arriving with pollen on 4/26

4) There are three photos of one side of one brood frame. What was on the rest of the frames (There should be 10 sides to look at, and we see 2)? I don't need photos of all, but descriptions would be good, or another photo of a brood frame? I am no sure I have both sides but here is what I have from 5-8:

Frame 5

Frame 6

Frame 7

Frames 1,2,3,9 and 10 were all empty

5) What do you mean by "looking weak?". It is really useful to report "frames of bees," or an example of cluster size (e.g." softball size cluster"). By “looking weak” I meant we were seeing almost no activity at the entrance as compared to the “package bee” hive and the number of bees on the frames appeared to be much less than when we transferred. As you can see in the pictures above there were some bees on just a couple of frames

6) This is the big one: What do you mean "I believe" new eggs and larvae? This would really be the one that answers a lot - when the last time you saw the queen, and signs of her laying. If you really did see here/ good eggs on the 8th, then that would be very different. I believe we saw eggs on the 8^th but maybe seeing a reflection

Sorry about the delay - I thought that I had sent out the last response, but the draft was just sitting there.  

I also don't have great information for you, and part of that is it is just hard to tell sometimes without seeing/ knowing what is happening in the colony.   The photos don't allow us to see into the brood cells, so it is really hard to tell when the last time they were queen right.   I think for your beekeeping, I would make sure that you are good at identifying whether a colony is queen right - meaning if there are eggs.  This is a really important, and can help answer a lot of questions, or rule out a queen issue.  

The spotted brood pattern is concerning, but it is hard to tell if it is the cause of the loss, or happened after they left (and brood started to die).  

I would melt down the wax on the frames from that hive, and hopefully you can make some nice splits from your other hives later in the season. 

I'm so glad that you responded!  What a great outcome to the sad start to your season.