Same experience here with Japanes Beetles being the only significant pest. Of my pole beans, they liked Blue Lake, Kentucky Blue, Neckargold, Fortex, and Brown-Speckled Greasy Beans but pretty much left Uncle Steve's Italian Pole Bean alone. Go figure.
Good warm soil and keeping them picked are good rules of thumb. Gallaure, are you wanting to get "shelly"beans (bean seeds are large but still tender) or dry beans (bean seed is hard and dry)? If you want the shelly bean, then you should be okay with respect to production continuing. If you're going for dry beans, yeah, production will probably come to a halt.
Once the soil has warmed up I put down some newspaper and straw mulch down the row to preserve moisture (we often go for weeks without rain in mid summer).
I don't fertilize, but I do get my soil in pretty good shape with amendments in the fall and spring.
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--Ruth
Some say the glass half-full. Others say the glass is half-empty. To an engineer, it’s twice as big as it needs to be.
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