Abstract: In order to solve the problems of uneven energy consumption of sensor nodes and short lifetime of sensor networks in wireless sensor networks, an energy-efficient clustering routing protocol based on artificial bee colony algorithm is proposed. In the cluster head selection phase, the energy factor, location factor and centripetal factor are defined for the cluster head, thus an efficient fitness function is designed to evaluate the quality of the solution generated by the artificial bee colony algorithm, so as to select the optimal cluster head set. In the stable transmission phase, an efficient routing algorithm based on minimum spanning tree is proposed to balance and reduce network energy consumption by finding a suitable path between each cluster head and the base station. In order to further improve the network throughput, a polling control mechanism based on busy/idle nodes is introduced into intra-cluster communication phase. The performance of the proposed protocol is evaluated in several scenarios with different characteristics. Simulation results show that, compared with KUCR protocol and FIGWO protocol, the proposed protocol can effectively prolong the network lifetime and improve the network throughput.