Less than 35 years after the release of African honeybees outside Sao Paulo, Brazil, their descendants, popularly known as killer bees, had migrated as far north as southern Texas.

A) Less than 35 years after the release of African honeybees outside Sao Paulo, Brazil,

B) In less than 35 years since releasing African honeybees outside Sao Paulo, Brazil,

C) In less than the 35 years since African honeybees had been released outside Sao Paulo, Brazil,

D) It took less than 35 years from the release of African honeybees outside Sao Paulo, Brazil, when

E) It took less than the 35 years after the time that African honeybees were released outside Sao Paulo, Brazil, and then

OA is A

Since we have past perfect "had migrated" in the the latter part of the sentence, wouldnt this mean that the other action referenced in the underline section "release" needs to be in the simple past? Isnt that the definition of past perfect that there are two events that occur in the past but one occurs before the other thus the use of "had" + simple past is applied to that action. But the the action that occurred after the past perfect action is in the past also, thus requiring at a minimum simple past verb form - "released" not the infinitive form "release"??

This completely confused me, and on this rule alone I narrowed down the choices to C/E "released" was in the past tense.

I see how C is wrong now because you cant have two past perfect verbs in a sentence..or can you? is that ever logical??

Can someone please clarify this rule?? And how A can be in the infinitive form and still be correct? Thanks!

let's get one thing straight real quick here: 'release' in this sentence is a NOUN, not a verb.

proof: it's preceded by 'the'.
only nouns and noun phrases can be preceded by articles. (so, among other things, this can't be an infinitive - think about the absurdity of writing 'the be' or 'the to be')

this fact should take care of all your concerns about verb tense in this problem.

note that the past perfect is still justified, even though there's no second verb, because there's still a second time marker: i.e., the time that's less than 35 years after the release of the bees.

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yes, it's possible to have more than one past-perfect verb in the same sentence - as long as both/all of them obey the same rules as would a single past perfect verb. in other words, if you have the requisite 2nd verb or 2nd time marker, you can have as many 1st verbs in past perfect tense as you like.
example:
at the start of the 1995 season, the wildcats had not won a game for two years, and had not even scored a touchdown for an entire year.
both of the past-perfect verbs are ok here because they have the proper relationship with the 2nd time marker (the start of the 1995 season, which is in the past, is the 2nd time marker here).