Wireless sensor networks are formed by small devices communicating over wireless links without using a fixed network infrastructure. Because of limited transmission range and communication between any two devices requires collaborating intermediate forwarding network nodes, i.e. devices act as routers and end systems at the same time. Communication between any two nodes may be trivially based on simply flooding the entire network. However, more elaborate routing algorithms are essential for the applicability of such wireless networks, since energy has to be conserved in low powered devices and wireless communication always leads to increased energy consumption. In this paper, the authors describe a novel energy efficient routing approach which combines swarm intelligence, especially the genetic algorithm.