Bedbugs can come into homes on or inside luggage, furniture, bedding or clothing.
Inside homes, bedbugs can hide in small cracks and crevices, such as behind a bed headboard, in the seams and tufts of a mattress, inside a box spring, along the cracks of a wall's baseboard, behind wallpaper and in clutter.
Bedbugs do not transmit diseases.
While they typically feed on blood every five to 10 days, leaving red, itchy welts, bedbugs can live for a year or more without eating. They also can survive temperatures ranging from almost freezing to almost 113 degrees.
Bedbugs leave feces on mattresses, box springs and other furniture. The feces may bleed on fabric like a felt-tip marker.
When bedbugs are crushed, they leave rusty or reddish stains on bed sheets or mattresses.
Bedbug eggs and eggshells are tiny, about 1 mm, and white.
Live bedbugs have flat bodies, antennae and small eyes, and are visible to the naked eye. But many other bugs may look like them, so getting an expert's identification is key.
Source: Federal Trade Commission