The Maison Radio-Canada in Montreal and the Toronto CBC Broadcasting Centre now have four hives, containing up to 20,000 honeybees, installed on the roofs.

It's a joint initiative with the urban beekeeping company Alvéole Inc.

"Each hive is composed of a queen bee and thousands of worker bees and drones. By the end of the summer, we anticipate that there will be 50,000 bees in each hive," said Daniel Langevin, CBC/Radio-Canada's manager of health, safety and environment for real estate services.

Athena Trastelis, who leads environment-related activities at CBC, said bringing the bees to the buildings is "doing our part" to fight the decline of the bee population.

Climate change, pesticides and habitat loss have all contributed to the decline in recent years.