Swarm intelligence algorithm develops rapidly these years and solve many large scale complex problems. Artificial bee colony algorithm is a new swarm intelligence algorithm, which gets wide attention for its superior performance, for example, strong global convergence, greedy heuristic search feature and quickly problem solution. The biological background is introduced briefly; modeling thought is given through the comparision between bees foraging behavior and problems solution; and algorithm model is introduced in detail; the research status quo is discussed from improvement and application of the algorithm these years; at last, research prospects are given about artificial bee colony algorithm, and improvement direction and application field are put forward from the weekness analysis of algorithm.