An artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is developed for the optimum design of geometrically non-linear steel frames. The ABC is a new swarm intelligence method which simulates the intelligent foraging behaviour of honeybee swarm for solving the optimization problems. Minimum weight design of steel frames is aimed under the strength, displacement and size constraints. The geometric non-linearity of the frame members is taken into account in the optimum design algorithm. The performance of the ABC algorithm is tested on three steel frames taken from literature. The results obtained from the design examples demonstrate that the ABC algorithm could find better designs than other meta-heuristic optimization algorithms in shorter time.