Maybe it's grasshoppers. It's really so hard to just guess what it might be.

One pole(climbing vine) beans that I lik best is "Hyasinth". It starts flowering and producing beans from June till November(right now). It flowers and grows beans non-stop, and attracts bees. What is more is that it has the most beautiful fragrant purple flowers and beans. The beans can be harvested young or left to mature. The color and cluster of the beans also are very pretty. It is perhaps better than some mail box flowers or morning glories(which do not have fruits and the flowers are closed most of the time). This past summer I had another pole beans (orange color), Cypress vine, morning glories, passiflora Incarnata, all climbing on the same arch. I have been most happy with Hyasinth beans than the rest combined. I will not plant Cypress vine next year, although I have so much seeds of it. The passiflora will grow back and I will just plant Hyasinth Pole beans and maybe two wild morning glories(non-lobed leaves), which are much pretier than cultivated ones and flowers grow as a bunch. Back to climbing beans: My all time favorite:Hyasinth.

Bush beans are 9 per SF and pole are 8. I don't know the variety you speak of, but my bush beans under performed last year. So if they were to feed two adults, I would succession plant 4 to 8 squares every few weeks and as they die back. Pole beans could probably be done in half that but you'd stop when you run out of trellis space, hehe. Good luck.

Sorry to have annoyed you Mavens. I was just speaking from many decades of experience growing Runner Beans. They are the number one vegetable for home gardeners here in the UK. People who grow nothing else will grow a few runner beans. We eat the beans almost exclusively as green beans and do not grow them for the flowers so it is important that they crop optimally. The OP is not in California so waiting for a better crop from an overwintered tuber is not going to help him/her. I truly believe they would do far better giving their beans a lot more room than you have. Runner Beans are heavy feeders and water lovers and putting them in with other plants, although it works to your satisfaction, is not the optimum way to grow them. I suggested the OP look at illustrations on line but if figures are required they can put 6 - 8 beans into a container 18" high and 18" deep. P.S. you mentioned eating the Runner Bean leaves in salads. In small quantities this may not be a problem but you do need to be aware that Phaseolus coccineus should not be eaten raw as they contain a toxic protein.