The invention discloses a genetically engineered bacterium for efficiently synthesizing alpha-arbutin and a construction method and application of the genetically engineered bacterium, and belongs tothe technical field of genetic engineering. Alpha-arbutin is efficiently produced by whole-cell catalysis of recombinant bacillus subtilis for expressing sucrose phosphorylase (SmSP), and a new thought and a new method are provided for production of alpha-arbutin. The protein mutant SmSPI336L with improved SmSP enzyme activity is screened through molecular docking and site-specific saturation mutagenesis, the protein expression quantity of SmSP is increased by increasing the copy number of SmSPI336L on a genome, and the yield of alpha-arbutin is greatly increased by optimizing the catalytic condition of a BS-3SmSPI336L strain. When the concentration of a substrate HQ is 50 g / L, the sucrose concentration is 310.9 g / L, the thallus concentration OD600 is 40, the yield of alpha-arbutin reaches115.8 g / L when a catalytic system catalyzes for 20 hours in a shake flask at 30 DEG C and 220 rpm, and the molar conversion rate of the substrate HQ is 93.6%.