The article seems to mention a heuristic method the bumblebees use to improve their path, which consists of changing subpaths. A heuristic doesn't necessarily g

The article seems to mention a heuristic method the bumblebees use to improve their path, which consists of changing subpaths. A heuristic doesn't necessarily give the optimal solution, while there are methods that do give the optimum. An example is Concorde at GAtech, that solved problems with 15k nodes: http://www.tsp.gatech.edu/concorde.html http://www.tsp.gatech.edu/concorde.html