Thank you for your responses. It does sound easy to quickly open the lid, pull out the strips and close it up. I wish that this was all that I needed to do.
Well. I have to explain that this is my first year and I am learning quite a bit as I go. I read the instructions for the Apistan and followed them. I put the strips in amongst the "brood". This meant that I opened the hive and put the strips down, down, down into the bottom deep. I am a small person and it was suggested that I use shallow supers above the deep, as a deep that is full of honey is too heavy for me to lift. So, unfortunately I need to remove two shallow supers to get down to the Apistan strips. The next "warm" day is Monday, when the temperature is supposed to be around 53 degrees fahrenheit. (We had snow again last night..) If I have to take the hive completely apart - is 53 warm enough to work with them? I feel bad for the bees, but I don't want to make ALL of the potential mistakes in the first year. I sure don't want to create mitacide resistant mites on top of all of my other first year errors. (The bees have been forgiving up to this point..) Is it possible to remove the top shallow super and cover it with a tarp or something while I get down to the strips? The suggestion of "hinging" the upper level makes sense with the next layer.
Melissa