This paper presents the application of bee colony optimization (BCO) to obtain the optimal switching angles for single phase PWM AC choppers. The optimal switching angles are found in the region of 0-${\pi}$ based on the asymmetrical PWM technique. This PWM process results in improvements of the total harmonic distortion of the output voltage and in the input power factor. Simulation and experimental results are compared with the conventional PWM to verify the performance of the proposed PWM process.