With over 7 billion people on the planet, agriculture faces immense pressure to meet global demands for food. One third of consumed food relies on insect pollination with by far, the predominate pollinator being the honey bee, Apis mellifera. Although future challenges facing agriculture will come from multiple domains, one of the immediate challenges is honey bee decline. Stress associated with transportation, pesticide exposure nutritional limitations, various diseases and pests have all been recognized as potential factors in honey bee decline. With the prospect of future global changes in climate, honey bees will also face changes in forage availability and overwintering potential. At the level of the individual colony, research has shown that honey bee health is directly correlated to genetic diversity. Increased colony diversity is associated with lower disease intensity, increased disease resistance, greater workforce productivity and thermoregulation stability. Genetic diversity at the population level serves as the raw material for selective breeding in agriculturally important plants and animals, including the honey bee. Honey bees are not native to Korea, however, and importation and founder events associated with the establishment of honey bees represent a series of genetic bottlenecks that limits the diversity of introduced honey bee populations. Fortunately, Apis mellifera consists of around 28 recognized subspecies within its native range, each with specific adaptations to climatic selective pressures endemic to its own location. Climate change is expected to be bring a high degree of uncertainty in the future to climate expression in various locations. Fortunately, the honey bee has a wide breadth of diversity contained within various subspecies and careful importation and evaluation of specific stocks may be highly useful as we enter climate uncertainty in the future. With the recognition that agro-ecosystems are highly interconnected and multifaceted, one of the greatest challenges facing agriculture is preserving and improving honey bee health.