Since they were first introduced as powerful stochastic optimization systems, ant-based systems have been applied to a wide range of problems. One of the most successful applications has been routing in dynamic wired telecommunication networks. Following this success, similar approaches have been applied to routing in multi-hop wireless networks. The objective has been to achieve self-organizing path management in these networks. This paper looks back on 10 years of research and presents reflections on the challenges, the evolution, the contributions and the future perspectives in this field.