I found the exact same thing last night while harvesting Blue Lake Bush beans. I studied the little critter but was unable to determine what it was (I agree it is some type of larvae). I sprayed mine with Safer brand insect soap which is organic/natural and plan to watch the next few days to see if the problem clears up. If they decide to stick around, it might be a good idea to call the county coop extension and see what they offer in the way of solutions. Here is a link that might be useful: Lamey's Green Garden

My Fortex are late as well, but so are most of my other beans, both pole & bush. After planting all of my beans on time & getting good germination, they just stalled. There was considerable yellowing & stunting for all varieties. I blame several things for this: (1) The main garden was not used last year (except for garlic) so the population of nodule-producing bacteria may have died out. However, my smaller home plots had beans last year, and they too had stunted beans in June. (2) I was very late laying down mulch this year, since my source (a local farmer) took a two week vacation. Normally I mulch when the beans have their first true leaf. (3) The heat & drought. I think I underestimated the degree of water stress caused by the heat, and did not irrigate deeply enough. After mulching & several deep waterings, most of the pole beans recovered, and are now growing vigorously - but several weeks late. It will be a race to get dry seed before frost. The only exception is Dolloff, which had almost no stunting & set pods in close to the time I would expect. (That Dolloff set large numbers of pods in the extreme heat is noteworthy.) The bush beans did not fare as well. Most are still stunted, and are slow to put out healthy foliage. There was one exception here as well: Wood's Mountain Crazy Bean. While it too was stunted initially, it sprouted new foliage very quickly after mulching, and the plants are now healthy & vigorous. It has some of the largest leaves I have seen in a bush bean. I'm glad I added it to the schedule this year. Runner beans have fared poorly, as would be expected given the abnormal heat. Bianco de Spagna has just hung onto life, but it is severely stunted, and shows no sign of recovering. Oddly enough, the stunting extended to most of my cowpeas & yardlongs as well. They were inoculated at time of planting, so that was not an issue. Nor should the heat here have been excessive. At first, I wondered whether I had herbicide over-spray from the nearby corn field... but the soybeans & limas were healthy. So I assume it was water stress for them as well. I have been watering deeply, and most of the vining varieties have fully recovered. As with the bush beans, the two bush cowpeas - Yancheng Bush and MN 157 - are still stunted. They are bearing in spite of it, though. It seems that whatever the source of the bean stunting, the increased vigor of the indeterminate varieties allowed them to pull out of it, while the bush varieties could not. As just mentioned above, limas and soybeans have grown normally, and are actually on track to produce larger than normal yields. Adzuki & Black Gram were stunted initially, but have fully recovered. There is one other possibility for the stunting I observed, which is Phytoplasma, a bacteria-like disease spread by plant sucking insects. The Seed Savers Exchange reports that much of the garlic in the Midwest was infected by Phytoplasma this year. Some of my garlic exhibited signs of the disease. I haven't been able to find any proof that this disease could spread to beans, but it would explain why the stunting was widespread in certain species, and absent in others.

I'm afraid some of those internet pictures of Tennessee Greasy beans out there might be mine - and mislabelled. I'm mostly convinced that this is not the same bean I planted there... it might well be a greasy bean, or something that wandered from another part of the garden. I can say this for certain - it is prolific and loves the soil here. I planted: Dragon's Tongue/Lingerie (which were a yellow wax of nowhere near this size) Jeminez ((what about this one? descriptions vary widely and it was planted on the other side of the garden but well...) Black Shackamaxon Bosnian pole bean (orange with tiger stripes and green pods) Kenearly yellow eye Mayflower Kentucky wonder brown seeded Pinto beans Painted pony (which died off producing one seed) the brown 'Tennessee Greasy beans' and several varieties of cowpeas that can be ruled out immediately. I'm really curious on this one and have a lot of seed for next year, so want to name it properly. ~Marie in TN Here is a link that might be useful:

It's the heat, this has been the first year I've had so many varieties that are 'just now' starting to produce flowers due to heat in the 90's, unheard of temperatures for here especially June which is usually cool and damp. Surprisingly a couple of varieties that didn't blink an eye and kept on trucking were Brita's Foot Long, Grandma Nellie's Mushroom, Blue Jay and the purple runner Aeron Purple Star. In fact Grandma Nellie's are finished as far as eating goes, I have a pole of pods drying down nicely for seed, some already dry. The Brita's and Blue Jay are at the eating stage and the purple runner is flowering again, have eaten them several times, I've also picked a few dried on the vine pods already. I did find one vine that is producing green rather than purple pods, if I had noticed it earlier I would have rouged it out, apparently this can happen and it's best to pull the plant as soon as possible. Everything looks like it's back on track now that it's cooled down a bit, the vines look green and healthy, all we need now is a decent fall to collect seed from these johnny come late-lies. Annette