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I live in corn county.   I had a few thousand acres planted around my farm and 3 of my 4 other yards last week just like it happens every year.   The 4th is in fruit.     I have never smelled the planters or seen the pink dust.   Did your wife notice if the farmers had spray tanks hanging off the front of the  tractors.  At the price of fuel multiple trips through a fields are to costly.   

There's two things I think you might be talking about.  The first (and I think least likely) is the bottom board, the floor of the hive.  On your common bottom board, the hive entrance is taller when one side of the bottom board is up than it is when the other side is up.  I vaguely, distantly remember way back in some old book that this is on purpose, that the bottom board is intentionally made to be "reversible".  But for the life of me, I've never seen a single article or heard a single talk discussing this use of this feature of the bottom board, or when the correct time for "reversing" it might be.  I've always had em deepest-side-up and that's how they stayed.

The other thing I think you might be talking about is the entrance reducer.  It's the wooden cleat that sits across the hive entrance, blocking most of it except for a small notch.  At the appropriate time, you rotate this cleat so that a larger notch (larger entrance) is made; and then finally you remove the cleat altogether so that the whole entrance is open.

There are nuances involved; but generally, you want to leave the smallest entrance there until they've drawn about 7 or 8 frames in that first deep fully - in other words, you switch to the slightly larger entrance size at the same time as you put on your second deep.  Once that second deep is 70% drawn, remove the entrance reducer entirely.

Beware agrochem companies bearing gifts?

Perhaps Monsanto and Bayer might indeed be hiding behind mites in an attempt to deflect attention from themselves and their practices; but that's only possible because varroa really are a critical threat.  Make no mistake.

>These foundationless frames now have brood which will not be regressed.

What size cells did they build?

    The cells built by the packaged bees on foundationless is 4.9mm   

    This relieves my concerns.

If it was right after the planting it was due to the dust.

My wife who really listens very little to the bee issues I have asked me the other day whats that pink stuff they put on seeds. Seeing that she didnt say corn or some type I just replyed poison. Her next statement was very telling as she works as a rural mail carrier it stinks then she told me that when they are planting there is a pink cloud of dust fallowing the planters everywhere they go and it stinks. Seeing that every report you see says the stuff is deadly as it can be on the seed or the dust the seeds have I would say that the dust they had on the planters was doing it and if there was a wind in that direction you could get those results.

I have a friend with a lot of acres he wants me to put hives out there but he lets his farmer plant corn I told him I would not move a hive till after planting season to avoid the dust.

mites are definitely the one of the worst things to happen to the honey bees but monsanto & bayer with their gmo crops, herbicides, & pesticides have not exactly been the bees best friends either.

i'm not sold on gmo crops or herbicides but pesticides are designed to kill insects so that kind of has to be true.  but the title of this thread suggests that mites are part of some "big business" conspiracy. 
if people would show me hard data instead of trying to use this platform to whine about corporate greed i might be swayed a bit more.  i'm sick of class envy hiding behind environmental issues.
i think that the dust created by planting treated corn is part of the problem.  i think the chemical companies have admitted to that as well but i don't hear the armchair activists admitting that there is a lot more going on than neonics. etc. 

The worst swarm I've ever had was last Sunday after they'd been rained on all night and as another storm was coming in.  Got stung 6-8 times and they were more defensive than I'd ever run into before.  Got them hived and settled in their new apiary as the clouds broke open.

Thanks for the advice.

I have three hive "bodies" currently, I just refer to them as "supers".  They are the large/standard size (9 5/8").

I expect kathyp is correct, they needed the room and the queen went up into the top hive body to lay.

The bottom two deeps have a mix of capped honey and pollen on the outer frames and less densely packed brood in the center frames (compared to the newly placed 3rd box on top).  So hopefully the queen will move back down into the bottom deeps and backfill the top super with capped honey.

Thanks again for the advice, what a great community, bee keepers are awesome!

oh...if you wait, keep them in a dim and cool room.

you don't need to install them today.  as long as they have food in the package, they can wait.  better not to rush so that you can do it right.

if you need to do it right away, it can be done between rain shower or whatever.  think someone did it between snow showers last year!