Abstract: Due to the shortcomings of the artificial bee colony(ABC)algorithm and the existing improved algorithms， a new modified ABC algorithm was proposed based on the subpopulations(SPABC). In this algorithm， the population was divided into two subpopulations according to the comparison between the individual fitness value and the mean of population fitness values， and the different search method was adopted in the different subpopulations to effectively balance exploration and exploitation capability. In addition， the initial solutions were generated by piecewise Logistic equation to enhance the convergence speed of the algorithm. Compared with ABC algorithm and other modified ABC algorithms， the numerical simulation results demonstrated that the proposed algorithm has better optimization accuracy and convergence speed in solving complex numerical optimization problems.

Key words: artificial bee colony algorithm, subpopulation, search method, piecewise Logistic equation