Mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) is an emerging domain among the researchers, which is an ensemble scheme of numerous mobile nodes and it works without any base station. In ad hoc networks, usage of energy is the main issue, and the energy level of the node is not considered by Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) during the route discovery phase. The node with minimum energy in the transmission area will fail transmission and packet dropping. The link failure reinitiates the route request (RREQ) and consumption of energy also high. To enhance this issue, an optimized routing strategy is introduced by the Ant Colony Optimization with Bacterial Foraging Algorithm (ACO-BFA) for AODV. The routing process is initiated by ACO and a high probability routing path is assigned to bacteria. The routing is enhanced by the ACO-BFA technique and the simulation analysis shows that the proposed technique outperforms the existing state-of-art AODV routing techniques.