I've seen similar bite marks on a few of my green beans. Was maybe one out of 50, now a bit more with the weather warmer. Are you seeing a lot of them to a point it affects your harvest? Because I never used insecticides on veggies, there're always small insects such as small grasshoppers, flea beetles, cucumber beetles, ladybugs, etc on my pole beans plants. So the bite marks could be from a number of insects. Because the population of insects is not out of control and it doesn't affect my harvest, I just throw away the marked ones and learn to live with the bugs. But if I must guess, I'd say the bite marks on my green beans are from those small grasshoppers that sucks on the green beans all day long OR the occasional cucumber beetles :-)

Nancy drew, You are a very good mom,as time marches on, your children will remember all that you have tought them,he will grow out of the bug stage,and forget that you did away with a few. When my children were small,we lived our life as you do now, execpt for the recycling,we didn't know any better,but we do now. I made my own bread,butter,yogurt,all from fresh milk from a farmer,canned all our food, ground my own winter wheat,and on and on. My children would have dyed for a white bread sandwhich,to them, it was like eating cake. They are all grow up now,and all but one,is very conscious of our enviroment,my daughter and her hubby have started their own business making Organic face and body soap,nothing intheir home goes to waste. Trust me, your children will be a better care taker of our great earth than we are.You are doing a good job. cAROL

Aren't grasshoppers and katydids all considered part of the locust family? ... like plagues of locusts?!?! Sort of, but not quite. They're both part of an insect order named "Orthoptera" (along with crickets), but the grasshoppers are one family within Orthoptera (a family named "Acrididae") and the katydids are another family within Orthoptera (a family named "Tettigoniidae"). Now, "locusts" ("like plagues of locusts") are actually all grasshoppers, but they are species within just one particular grasshopper genus, and the name of that genus is "Schistocerca". Under normal circumstances the species in Schistocerca aren't especially unique or anything (except to someone trained in identifying grasshopper species). They're just others of the grasshoppers you might see in a meadow, or a crop field. However, what makes the Schistocerca grasshoppers special is how their physiologies respond to rainfall. These grasshoppers often live in areas that are fairly dry in most years, but that every so often have wet years, or wet seasons in a part of some years. If I remember correctly, when the rainfall happens the right way it stimulates adult females to all lay eggs, and then the eggs develop differently from being exposed to the extra soil moisture from the rainfall. A different set of development genes "turn on" in the developing embryos. When those grasshopper nymphs hatch they then in turn behave differently. Normally locust nymphs are solitary (like other grasshoppers), but in the wet years (when the vegetation is coming out in a flush of lush growth in response to the extra rain) instead of living in a solitary style those nymphs are gregarious. They stay close together and move as units, eating as they go. This behavior stays with them all the way to adulthood, and the adulthood is different too. Their adult bodies look much different than they do in the dry times. The bodies are markedly larger, heavier, and the wings are unusually long. They're also much more willing fliers, and they fly gregariously. Since the weather is stormier the air is more turbulent, and these clouds of locusts (& they do look like clouds), travel on the storm winds, getting carried to areas where it's raining. That lets the young females lay eggs in wet areas, which keeps their exploitation of the rain going as new generations are born and continue on in this other "locust" physiology. They continue on that way until the rains quit - which may happen in a few months or a year or two later. Meanwhile they in their hopping and flying millions strip everything green down to dust, crops and all.

Oh well. Thanks for the info. I wonder what brought them here, then. Don't think I've seen more than about one green one every 18 months or so, and we're not very spidery.