CACHE VALLEY — Honeybees collect nectar from flowers to make their food. In doing so, they transfer pollen from flower to flower. Pollinated flowers produce fruit and then seeds, which in turn produce more flowers and thus more nectar for bees.

This is one of nature's grandest cycles — yet one that we often take for granted, even as we might be spreading honey on our morning toast. Do you know, for example, that:

• On average, one out of three foods we eat come from plants that are pollinated by insects, especially bees.

• In the course of her lifetime, a single worker bee will produce 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey.

• To make one pound of honey, the bees in a hive will fly approximately 55,000 miles.

• In a single collecting trip, a worker bee will visit between 50 and 100 flowers and will return to the hive carrying more than half her weight in pollen and nectar.

Duane and Margene Cox know these things. As lifelong beekeepers, they know all about what goes into getting honey. Even so, said Duane, there are still a lot of mysteries, a lot of ongoing discoveries about what bees and honey do. "What we do know will not make as big a book as what we don't know."

Their son, Darren, now the keeper of the beehives and the fourth generation of Coxes to work with bees, knows about as much about them as anyone, too. He knows it's a hard way to make a living. But it also has its rewards. "It beats working in a factory. I have one of the best offices around. I get to work out in nature. I get to watch the four seasons come and go."

Beekeeping is very much a seasonal operation. Beekeepers and their hives must follow the blossoms. "We're moving all the time," Margene said. "Our first bloom is the dandelions. Then come the clover and alfalfa." Later in the summer, they take the hives up by Bear Lake to get the raspberry and wildflower nectar. In the winter, Darren loads the hives onto a semitrailer truck and takes them to California, where they pollinate the almond trees. In the spring, it's back to Cache Valley, where the process begins all over again.

Cox Honey began in 1929, with Duane's father, Marion, who actually kind of fell into the business. "Dad lived in St. George, and he met a girl from here who was working there for the summer. When she came home, he decided to follow her up here and see if he could find work."