Since they are all field bees, they had no reason to go inside an empty box. If I were in your place and had a small nuc, I would put it there. With the brood, queen, and nurse bees in a nuc, they should go in and give the nuc a good boost. You could do it with a bought queen also. The downside to that would be that there are no nurse bees. Some of the field bees would have to revert back to nurse bees. Either way I would give it a shot.