The past 12 months have hardly amounted to a banner year in the annals of New York City history.

The mayoral administration imploded under Eric Adams as he faced federal corruption charges; the migrant crisis deepened; violent crime was down but certain quality-of-life crimes, like retail theft, which can sour enthusiasm for city living, ticked upward.

Still, there were many moments in the light: Let’s not forget that the Albert Einstein College of Medicine received a $1 billion dollar gift to make tuition free forever (thanks to Ruth Gottesman); that Central Park’s Harlem Meer got ready for its close up (thanks to a $160 million, historic renovation); that “Anora,” Sean Baker’s film about a Brooklyn sex worker and the Russian oligarch’s son she impulsively marries, won the hearts and minds of moviegoers and the Palme d’Or.

And then there is all the human capital, the real reason to live in New York — all the under-the-radar (and on-the-radar) people who make the city worth the chaos. Meet seven of them, plus one awesome nonhuman.

Sean Malik Flynn

When his oldest daughter moved out of his house in the Bronx, Sean Malik Flynn, a single father, opened the window of his home’s newly spare room and got into beekeeping. Along with his daughter Alaura, who was still living with him, he started cultivating hives.

Eventually, they began donating them to churches and community gardens, figuring that the more bees they could bring to the area, the greater the output of those gardens could be and the higher the chance that the Bronx could shake its reputation as a food desert. Mr. Flynn also started making his own product: Boogie Down Bronx Honey. As his passion grew, he was moved to teach beekeeping to children in the neighborhood.