Hi, there. I'm still new into beekeeping also. I think you mean what are your responsibilities as the owner of the bees. I have a chance to buy 2 hives this summer. One died because of the ants. The second hive also on the verge of dying again due to the ants. This is due to my negligence as a new keeper. I put them on an ant hill and did not even found out until too late. Yes, you can buy the bees. It is better if you spend more money to buy the nucleus hives or existing established hives. A package bee can fail if you not know how to take care of them. Just do a net search and you will find many beekeepers in your area. Many of them do not advertise so you have to find them yourself. A bee removal company who does not kill them will have live bees for re-homing. Find them in your area and email or call them to ask.
You have to take care of them just like your babys. Give them foods and water to drink. Make sure they are comfortable and not too crowded. Be prepared to hive a new swarm if you have to. Most importantly get a honey bee suite if you do not want to get sting. I got stung 6 times on my right hand when I bought my first hive without a bee suite on. Silly me, will never do that again. Found out I am not allergic to bee sting after all. They will sting you in the beginning but once settled down they will leave you alone when they found out you are not a threat to them. I had videos of them chasing me 200 feet or more into my truck. Now they are docile little bees in my backyard once getting use to me being around. Also, find out if in your area the city or county allow you to keep bees or not. Some are not so bee friendly so you cannot keep them. I think they take up much responsibilities as taking care of your fish if not more. Hope this helps a little.

Thank You Ponders101. This is much to take into consideration. I plan on getting some books from the library and educate myself about them. I am going to e-mail the Cooperative Extension, as to why our area has no bees and what can be done.

It sounds like your local wild bee population is good, these are the one's pollinating your small crop garden, ..don't be surprised if you don't find any honey bees in there, these bees go for the large crop, like fruit trees clover, dandelion, large field crop like alfalfa or canola,..that's the norm here.

If you decide getting honey bees, ..joining a local bee club has helped me, ..the Canadian north is different then that from the south. You'll get allot of ideas, perhaps somebody can be your mentor for a while.

One thing our club has advised when getting into, they said to purchase brand new equipment for two hives. New wood is a safety issue, knowing that the wood is free of any bad spores or disease, like the American foul brood. 2 hives is good so you have another to compare the other if something goes wrong.

Forgot to add for getting bees, here, packages in spring is the way to go, you get new bees which you install very easily and in no time they will establish. During this time you need to feed sugar water, a frame feeder is good, this feeder is near the cluster, [warm] and bees don't have to walk far to get it.
Bees love warm sugar water, they take allot more then if it was cold.
When cold, mine have a pillow on top of hive cover and some Styrofoam around the hive to keep them warm, this way they can build up fast. A small hive [package] with maybe 1/4 of a full size hive need more insulation then a full box of bees.

Thank You Konrad. This is a big responsibility, so I'm taking all this into account.

check out The Barefoot Beekeeper.