Prem Kumar Nirania, 32, is an advocate in Abohar’s local courts. In March, he saw a newspaper advertisement on a training camp at Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Ferozepur, and decided to join. He started beekeeping immediately after the training camp ended. Today Nirania has about 70 bee colonies and has also brought out a organic honey brand, Himbee, which sells at Rs 300 a kg in the market. His brother-in-law Rohtash, a postgraduate, is a small kinnow farmer and a partner in Nirania’s project. Nirania works in the courts five days a week and devotes himself on weekends to his new pet project. If the business does well enough, Nirania says, he plans to give up his court practice for good. He says he made an initial investment of Rs 1.25 lakh and can do it all himself, from feeding the honeybees to taking the honey out. The brothers-in-law keep shifting boxes to parts of Punjab and Rajasthan based on the flowering season of what the bees feed on. Guriqbal Singh is an expert in mixing coffee into various flavours. The chief brewmaster at a Barista outlet in Sarabha Nagar of Ludhiana district, he is also a trained honeybee farmer. Singh is 22 and started this career about six months ago with five boxes to breed colonies in. He now has 30 and regularly monitors his boxes, but has employed a helper too because of his coffee-making job. He plans to sell his honey to large units that can process it before selling it in the market. “For the past few training sessions, I have been observing that honeybee farming is popular not only with landless farmers but also with people in white-collar jobs, who are coming for the training camps,” said Dr Yuvraj Pandha, assistant professor at Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Ferozepur. Dyan Singh, 30, is another such beekeeper. Working as an inclusive education volunteer at a government school, he rears his colonies in 25 boxes and sells his honey among his friends at Rs 300 a kg. His additional income comes to around Rs 80,000 a year as of now. Manpreet Singh, assistant manager in Bharat Gas in Jalalabad, devotes his Sundays to his bees. Sukhdev Singh, a former Punjab Roadways employees, has just started with five boxes in Vahabwala village of Abohar. Most of them say they began because of the necessity to find another source of income but now they find the additional career so interesting that they wait expectantly for the weekend to arrive.