It was impressive to see the beans here in 2012 make it through the intense heat and  drought and end up with decent yields. Beans today, already can take major heat and dry weather to a point. 

After being planted early in 2012, the beans were subjected to over a month with temperatures well into the 90's and numerous  days when it was over 100. Folks don't realize this but increasing CO2 makes plants more heat tolerant and water efficient. 

These beans would have died with the CO2 level in the atmosphere of a century ago.

They  almost shut down and sat there doing almost nothing in July and in fact, since they were planted early and under extreme stress, they flowered prematurely at the end of July and all the flowers aborted with not enough moisture to support pod setting.

 You'd have thought they would yield 0 towards the end of July. Then, the weather pattern shifted with an El Nino kicking in and August turned very wet here in the Eastern Cornbelt.......and it wasn't too late.

  The beans immediately came alive(the plants could never recover lost growth of course) and they all went crazy flowering again, this time resulting in pods that had ideal pod setting and filling conditions with mild temperatures and tons of rain.

Yields were not great......around here we might get more like 40-45 bushel/acre in an average year but I heard of lots of guys getting 35 bushels from plants that all looked dead at the end of July.