well i've not had any specific luck in that regards but i have learned a few things in the past dozen years.
the harder the year the more bumblebee activity i will see in the beans. this year was probably the most active i've ever seen it with the bumblebees starting off slow and i was really worried but once the rains came back then it really took off and it was rather crazy out in the gardens. i'm expecting a lot of strange new out crosses next year from whatever i replant. i'd really like to see something different in all the Yellow Eye beans i've selected.
i planted some gardens very closely with my rows being 6 - 8 inches apart and multiple rows (two to three) in the same larger row so i was hoping the plants would help support each other and also help crowd out weeds better and also provide some cooling shade for each other (but i also wanted to use the space more efficiently because having a walking row between each row was taking up a lot of space). and then to make things even tighter in some rows i put Adzuki beans in with whatever other beans i was planting. the booger groundhog really found all those plants as too much temptation and feasted on a lot of those but it may have helped somewhat too as the regular bean plants did not get their foliage eaten nearly as much as i'd expect with a resident groundhog (it had a den it had dug right in one of my bean gardens inside our fenced area and i didn't know that was in there until some weeks later. oops...
interplanting, side by side rows, as many opportunities for the bees to do their crossing trick for me because i could not do it myself (i shake too much and i can't really see at that specific range clearly enough either). several hundreds plants of each type and hope that when you do your seed selecting for the next plantings that you happen to get some of those seeds set aside. the higher percentage of your plants you get seeds selected from and then replanted the more likely you'd be to get those crosses. i've done moderately well but i have not yet specifically made sure that each and every plant gets a seed sample taken for further planting - i'd need to do that for thousands of plants. in some gardens i should really make the effort though as they are smaller and more focused.
so what i lack for in full coverage i make up for in keeping at it year after year and finally i do get some results, but they may not be exactly what i'm after so i need to then keep going. Purple Dove took me three years to see the first out cross, four years to get several. now i have those seeds to work with on top of all the other projects... now i need acreage and minions. i also happened to get my first Painted Pony and Peregion selection out cross this year (that i know of
). i've had plenty of other Painted Pony out crosses show up and some of them are really interesting but none have been edible pods before so it will be fun to see how this goes along this coming season - no idea if it will be stable or not (if it isn't and it is as unstable as Monster, well, i'm scrod
)...
as it turned out we had a major invasion beyond the groundhog, we also had tons of grass seed that had gotten blown into all of the gardens and the existing population of purslane also wanted to sprout like mad in any garden. i had to do a large amount of extra weeding that i normally didn't have to do before this past year and it seemed i was always behind the whole time even more than usual. it was ok, most of it did get done before seeds were dropping but i sure did not get as much Japanese Beetle picking as i've done some other years and i didn't get as much chance to really look at some gardens very closely for noticing which plants were nicer and i could tag them for seed selections.
ok, but back to interplanting and spacing. if you do interplant try to put plants together that finish about the same time and keep an eye out for any plants that give up early because those will be your most likely problems later for white mold (this would apply also to patches where you've closely planted a lot of the same variety too as some do just give up).
I have gotten so many great new beans from you! When I was packing them up I got to swoon over them more closely than I have yet. Those Stephano D'Aventi Borlotti beans were so HUGE that the '50' barely fit inside the packet! The Dead Man's Tooth were surprisingly large too for a kidney type. I'm quite pleased with how all the beans turned out. Between the azomite, the kelp meal, the greensand, wood ash and the electric fertilizer I think I'm finally hitting my stride with growing beans. 
And I put an order in with Mandy's Greenhouse too which will soon be here. Poroto Huancabamba, Piet’s Special, Oja de Cabra will be fun ones to try. All I need to buy now is more land so I can grow it all. Or start guerilla gardening in the neighbours backyard. 
