What Lance Davis, American most famous bee -catcher and Indian Wells Tennis Saviour, did afterwards

Palm Desert, California, it is a drizzly gray morning in the desert and Lance Davis, the most famous bee -catcher in the country, is somewhat grumpy. He is in his office at the back of an industrial complex in the middle of the Coachella valley, without bees, no honey, no work and no money.

There is rain in the prediction all afternoon. Davis Equipment, a vacuum in Ghostbusters style that raises swarms of bees without killing them and allows him to move to his bee shoot 35 miles to the east, cannot work in the wet.

He is the man who saved Indian Wells last year, when a bee invasion fell on the spider camera above stadium one during Carlos Alcarazs quarterfinals against Alexander Zverev. The bees went on their way to the bright pink of a terrified Alcarazs kit; He was stabbed twice and did not want to resume when Davis had done his work because he could still see bees.

It is not possible to think about the course that the life of Alcarazs could have taken if Davis had not tested, without protection, to save the day.

Improperable tennis fame is not what life is about for Davis, who is 65. He had something for bees since he was a teenager in Colorado in the 1970s. Some children become addicted to the clarinet or Lacrosse. Davis became addicted to the 4-H Club, the youth development program where he learned about all things in agriculture, including bees.

It is about emotion, says Davis, leaning back in his office chair on a rare desert morning, not spent drawing a beehive from a crack behind a concrete pillar, or subtly scraping one of a roof.

Your emotion is important for how the bees treat you. If you are scared and nervous, they will probably attack you just because they know they can intimidate you to get away faster. Not all of them will attack you, but a few.

Lance Davis briefly opened a tennis hero last year BNP Paribas. (Frederic J. Brown / AFP via Getty images)

He pauses for a moment and thinks he can convey the comfort that he finds in a swarm. How he crawls under a car or in a crack filled with thousands of bees without a protective suit before he comes up without a stitch. Sometimes those bees are honey bees. Other times they are annoying murderer bees, who can be seriously aggressive.

It is just like when you keep a newborn for the first time, he said. Hello, good to see you. Let's work with this, let's achieve this.

He greets his companions with a migration of jute smoke to throw them off their game. Then he sucks them up, brings them into a carrier cage and think of the next party he is going to collect. Sometimes he will scrape something from the comb and give it to the owner of real estate who called for his help.

About 45 years ago he got 40 stitches on a single that swollen like a softball. A doctor told him that he should find a different work or that he would die.

I said, I don't know, I love bees. So I kept doing it and doing it, he said.

A year after that afternoon in Indian Wells, the legend of Lance Davis continues to unfold. It helps that he looks like a aging bass player in a rock band from the 70s with one hit song about forgetful albums, with his shoulder length brown hair and an eternal color. On Saturday he was on the net before the Muntsworp for the opening match of Alcarazs against Quentin Halys. While he was walking the site, fans continued to stop him for selfies. Now they appear on Alcarazs matches with bee rooms, which Alcaraz has credited on Monday evening for his stellar game against Denis Shapovalov.

During the entire first set I looked at them and laughed, and I always say that when I laugh, when I have fun on the field, I show good tennis, Alcaraz said after he had set up a clinic to beat Shapovalov 6-2, 6-4.

I took a selfie with me at the end, because I think they deserve it.

Just like Alcaraz, who won after his Apian interruption last year, Davis is hardly a hit miracle. He is on call for Indian Putten and staff at two of the major music festivals in the California Desert: Coachella, who hosts some of the biggest acts in the world, and the internship coach Festival. Both take place in the Empire Polo Club on the road in Indio. He sails the club in a golf cart. Sometimes he collects beehives with a few thousand bees; He says he encounters swarms with no less than 50,000.

That eats almost his April, that is when life starts to be seriously busy for Davis. The Coachella Valley does not go to sleep for 50 weeks until the tennis tournament returns at Indian Wells. The area, which lasts during the steaming summers, has a winter population of around 500,000 people. It is full of resorts and golf courses and luxury houses.

Those properties are full of plant lives and flower beds. Those flower beds are packed with bees that love them much more than the industrial farms outside the population centers. Industrial farmers use pesticides. The resorts and homeowners are not, at least not on the flowers and trees, and that helps Davis to keep from sunrise to sunset and sometimes in the evening. He even took a 17-foot Bijenkorf from the roof of a local hospital.

Fans of Tennis, Alcaraz and Bees may have just met Davis last year, but a few years ago, Wayne Page, a television producer, heard about him and thought that he might be the next Steve Irwin, the Late Australian Zookeeper who became famous as a Crocodile Jager.

Page has registered Davis and made and directed a television series of 13 episodes, The Killer Bee Catcher, which has been broadcast on Earthxtv, a cable canal since 2023. When Davis turned his star in Indian Wells last year, the series began to find a wider audience.

There is a cool factor for him, Page said about Davis. He is just a quirky character, but he is not bizarre. Like, I would like to have a beer (with him). Many of the people in that world who are quirky are also a bit edgy. Such as the snake dealers in the Bayou. They are a bit there.

Davis has his moments. He can poetic waxing about cuddling with murderous bees. And forget Juan Carlos Ferrero, Alcarazs lung time coach. As far as he sees it, the reason that Alcarzaz had the upper hand in Indian Wells last year.

Carlos Alcaraz had a difficult time when Bees swarmed with Indian Putten in 2024 (Charles Baus / Cal Sport Media via Associated Press)

Davis said he spoke to Alcaraz after Hed had ended his work and the young Spaniard told that the court was safe. Alcaraz did not want to play; Two bees will do that. Davis told him that the sun underwent and the air cooled. Bees usually do not fly at 57 degrees.

Moreover, the bees had swollen the court because they were looking for their queen; They had thrown the vibrations of the spider camera. Davis said he had the queen in the cage, and now all the bees swarmed the cage.

They smell the queen up there, so you're free here, Davis said he told the Alcaraz. Go outside, focus, stay focused and win.

He did more than just that. He won the entire tournament! Davis exclaimed. The honey, money and such.

(Top photo of Lance Davis: Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)