What went wrong

Unfortunately two hitches occurred with the delivery, both not catastrophic, but both bothersome (one more than the other).

The less bothersome one first:

The feeder (finally) filled

I had ordered syrup from Patrick, but he brought none. As the bees had stores in the nuc, this was not a major issue, but it did mean I had to spend the evening making syrup (see separate entry on this). I fed them the next day and all was fine. But irksome nevertheless.

Now the more bothersome one, which has longer term consequences:
Although I had said I had a standard hive with a deep brood chamber, Patrick took this to mean a normal one. Apparently I should have said a 12x14 (how is a beginner meant to know?). So the frames that he delivered the nucs on are all too shallow. Not a huge problem, really, other than that you have to be very careful with your timings, so you don't breed varroa. Basically, the bees will draw out the comb underneath the shallow frames as drone comb. Drone comb has more varroa in it, so with four half frames of drone comb I could be breeding varroa destructor and the destruction of both my colonies. The answer is to cut the capped drone cells off and destroy them. But really, I would have liked to decide myself whether and when I want to carry out drone trapping (as it's called) and not be forced to cull all or most of my drone cells every 22 days or so (drones hatch after 24 days, so you have to eradicate them before they hatch - or else you will have released the varroa mites.
Basically what I will do is try to remove a few of the shallow frames by hanging them at the edge of the colony (if enough is laid out), so that after the larvae hatch, the cells won't be relaid as quickly and I can replace with new frames of just foundation. Will see how that goes and let you know.