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[edit] The foraging process in natureA colony of honey bees can extend itself over long distances (up to 14 km) and in multiple directions simultaneously to exploit a large number of food sources. A colony prospers by deploying its foragers to good fields. In principle, flower patches with plentiful amounts of nectar or pollen that can be collected with less effort should be visited by more bees, whereas patches with less nectar or pollen should receive fewer bees.[5][6][7][8] The foraging process begins in a colony by scout bees being sent to search for promising flower patches. Scout bees move randomly from one patch to another. During the harvesting season, a colony continues its exploration, keeping a percentage of the population as scout bees. When they return to the hive, those scout bees that found a patch which is rated above a certain quality threshold (measured as a combination of some constituents, such as sugar content) deposit their nectar or pollen and go to the “dance floor” to perform a dance known as the waggle dance.[5] This dance is essential for colony communication, and contains three pieces of information regarding a flower patch: the direction in which it will be found, its distance from the hive and its quality rating (or fitness). This information helps the colony to send its bees to flower patches precisely, without using guides or maps. Each individual’s knowledge of the outside environment is gleaned solely from the waggle dance. This dance enables the colony to evaluate the relative merit of different patches according to both the quality of the food they provide and the amount of energy needed to harvest it. After waggle dancing on the dance floor, the dancer (i.e. the scout bee) goes back to the flower patch with follower bees that were waiting inside the hive. More follower bees are sent to more promising patches. This allows the colony to gather food quickly and efficiently. While harvesting from a patch, the bees monitor its food level. This is necessary to decide upon the next waggle dance when they return to the hive. If the patch is still good enough as a food source, then it will be advertised in the waggle dance and more bees will be recruited to that source. [edit] The Bees AlgorithmThe Bees Algorithm is an optimisation algorithm inspired by the natural foraging behaviour of honey bees to find the optimal solution[4]. The algorithm requires a number of parameters to be set, namely: number of scout bees (n), number of sites selected out of n visited sites (m), number of best sites out of m selected sites (e), number of bees recruited for best e sites (nep), number of bees recruited for the other (m-e) selected sites (nsp), initial size of patches (ngh) which includes site and its neighbourhood and stopping criterion. The pseudo code for the bees algorithm in its simplest form[4]: 1. Initialise population with random solutions. 2. Evaluate fitness of the population. 3. While (stopping criterion not met) //Forming new population. 4. Select sites for neighbourhood search. 5. Recruit bees for selected sites (more bees for best e sites) and evaluate fitnesses. 6. Select the fittest bee from each patch. 7. Assign remaining bees to search randomly and evaluate their fitnesses. 8. End While. In first step, the bees algorithm starts with the scout bees (n) being placed randomly in the search space. In step 2, the fitnesses of the sites visited by the scout bees are evaluated. In step 4, bees that have the highest fitnesses are chosen as “selected bees” and sites visited by them are chosen for neighbourhood search. Then, in steps 5 and 6, the algorithm conducts searches in the neighbourhood of the selected sites, assigning more bees to search near to the best e sites. The bees can be chosen directly according to the fitnesses associated with the sites they are visiting. Alternatively, the fitness values are used to determine the probability of the bees being selected. Searches in the neighbourhood of the best e sites which represent more promising solutions are made more detailed by recruiting more bees to follow them than the other selected bees. Together with scouting, this differential recruitment is a key operation of the Bees Algorithm. However, in step 6, for each patch only the bee with the highest fitness will be selected to form the next bee population. In nature, there is no such a restriction. This restriction is introduced here to reduce the number of points to be explored. In step 7, the remaining bees in the population are assigned randomly around the search space scouting for new potential solutions. These steps are repeated until a stopping criterion is met. At the end of each iteration, the colony will have two parts to its new population - those that were the fittest representatives from a patch and those that have been sent out randomly.[4] [edit] ApplicationsThe Bees Algorithm, which is inspired by the food foraging behaviour of honey bees, has found many applications in engineering field, such as:
[edit] See also[edit] References
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