At many corporate offices in Manhattan, the level of activity remains well below its prepandemic levels. But on and around some of New York City’s most iconic buildings, beehives are buzzing seven days a week.

At the Empire State Building, on a roof of Madison Square Garden and on a terrace adjacent to the Chrysler Building, thousands of veritable worker bees have been turning nectar into honey.

On an unseasonably warm Friday in November, a pair of professional beekeepers in protective gear stood on an 11th-floor terrace and tended to a pair of hives filled with Italian honeybees. The insects would not thrive up near the iconic spire of the Chrysler Building that loomed over them, but “here, they’re perfect,” said Matthew Flood, one of the beekeepers.

He and his co-worker, Titus Ogilvie-Laing, blew smoke from silver canisters to calm the bees before opening the hives. Using metal tools shaped like small crowbars, they pried frames out of the wooden hive boxes. Each frame was covered with hundreds of bees and filled with combs brimming with raw honey.