*2.3. Artificial Bee Colony*

An artificial bee colony (ABC) is an intelligent optimization model that mimics the honey harvesting operation of bees [43]. Food supplies, hired bees, and non-hired bees are the three components of the system [44]. Three kinds of artificial bees are used in the ABC algorithm: lead bees, scouts, and followers. The lead and scout bees seek the optimum solution sequentially, while the scout bees watch to see whether they fall into the local optimal. A random search for alternative food sources occurs if they fall within the local ideal. As the mass of nectar in a food source corresponds to a solution's mass, each food source represents one potential answer. The ABC may locate the best food source or the best solution via a cyclic search. The ABC flowchart is shown in Figure 3.

**Figure 3.** The process of ABC.
