The Bees Algorithm is a population-based search and optimization method inspired by the foraging behavior of honey bee colonies. It combines global exploration with neighborhood search and can be applied to combinatorial or continuous optimization problems where solution similarity or distance can be defined.
A population-based search algorithm which was developed by Pham, Ghanbarzadeh and et al. in 2005. It mimics the food foraging behaviour of honey bee colonies. In its basic version the algorithm performs a kind of neighborhood search combined with global search, and can be used for both combinatorial optimization and continuous optimization. The only condition for the application of the bees algorithm is that some measure of distance between the solutions is defined. The effectiveness and specific abilities of the bees algorithm have been proven in a number of studies.