Lance Davis, renowned for his bee-catching skills, finds himself with no urgent work due to unfavorable weather conditions. On a particularly slow morning, he reflects on his passion for bees, which began in his youth through a 4-H Club. His emotional demeanor influences how bees react to him, emphasizing a unique bond. A previous highlight of his career was saving a tennis match during a swarm incident at Indian Wells. Davis's empathetic approach and advanced equipment allow him to safely relocate bees, unaided by protective gear.
It's about emotion, Davis says, leaning back in his desk chair on a rare desert morning not spent pulling a hive out of a crevasse behind a concrete pillar, or delicately scraping one off a roof. Your emotion matters for how the bees treat you. If you're scared and nervous, they're going to probably attack you, just because they know they can intimidate you to get away faster.
Davis' equipment, a Ghostbusters-style vacuum that hoovers up swarms of bees without killing them and allows him to relocate them to his apiary 35 miles east, can't operate in the wet.
He saved Indian Wells last year, when a bee invasion descended on the spider camera above Stadium One during Carlos Alcaraz's quarterfinal against Alexander Zverev. The bees headed for the bright pink of a terrified Alcaraz's kit; he got stung twice and didn't want to resume play until Davis had done his work.
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