Bedbugs can be found on their own, but more often than not, due to circumstances, are found congregated in groups. They are not social insects, and do not build or live in nests. These groups of bedbugs are most often found in beds, usually either in the seams of a mattress, or within the structure of the bed frame itself. But they can also be found in a wide variety of locations in a home, such as behind skirting boards, behind a picture frame, within books, in telephones, or bedside radios, and within the folds of curtains. Bedbugs are capable of travelling as far as 100 feet to feed, but usually remain close to the host in bedrooms or on sofas where people may sleep. They feed every five to 10 days and the manner in which infestations spread room to room throughout a home will usually differ from case to case. It is important to inspect all adjacent rooms for infestation, as bedbugs travel easily and quickly along pipes and boards. In treatment, it is important to consider the insides of walls as potential places for bedbug infestation. The actual size of a bedbug infestation is variable and hugely dependent on the time elapsed since the initial infestation. All infestations start small and grow exponentially from this point. Even a single female bedbug brought into a home can result in a huge population expansion once offspring start breeding with offspring. It needs to be noted that the visible bedbug infestation does not necessarily represent the infestation as a whole, as there may be infestations elsewhere in a home, however, the insects do have a tendency to stay close to their hosts (hence the name "bed" bugs), so this can be quickly assessed to understand the full scale of the infestation.
