Abstract
Artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm, explored in recent literature, is an efficient optimization technique which simulates the foraging behavior of honeybees. ABC algorithm is good at exploration but poor at exploitation. This paper presents a new modified ABC algorithm for numerical optimization problems to improve the exploitation capability of the ABC algorithm. A different probability function and a new searching mechanism are proposed. The modified ABC algorithm is tested on seven numerical optimization problems. The results demonstrate that the modified ABC algorithm outperforms the ABC algorithm on solution quality and faster convergence.