[Louise Gaunt]

I have been a bit slow in harvesting my runner beans and many of the pods are tough and the beans are quite large. I have opened the pods and intend to just freeze the beans to use in stews etc. Is that ok or will they need boiling like dried kidney beans to remove toxins when I come to use them?

[pgkevet]

If they're going in stews then they're going to get cooked anyway. There's a lot of speculation and suggestion on google that eating them raw will upset some folk.
They are grown as a substitute for lima bean recipes in the more northern parts of the USA where lima beans won't grow and used as you intend.

A reminder to everyone that in Canada the flowers are used in salads.

[Lesley Silvester]

I have been a bit slow in harvesting my runner beans and many of the pods are tough and the beans are quite large. I have opened the pods and intend to just freeze the beans to use in stews etc. Is that ok or will they need boiling like dried kidney beans to remove toxins when I come to use them?

Now, why didn't I think of that? I've just fed a handful of French beans to the goats because they were too tough. Not that the goats were complaining. 

[Fleecewife]

I got fed up trying to pick the beans from dwarf French plants, so I'm letting them mature into beans for drying.  They will be like haricots, but I would still boil them through before using them. I would definitely do that with runners.   I believe you chuck out the boil water and use fresh to finish the cooking, because the initial water has removed the toxins. So this has to be done before you put them in a stew or soup.  You could also let the beans mature in their pods then dry them and store them that way.  They are great for saving your own seed, as well as providing a winter store for the kitchen.
If you pick the overgrown beans off now there will be the possibility of more young beans setting, but if you leave them on the plants they will think they've done their job for the year and stop producing flowers.
One year we grew white-seeded runners which, if left, produced butter beans.  Unfortunately I detest butter beans 

[Lesley Silvester]

The first year I was disabled I had raised beds built and grew dwarf French beans instead of my usual climbers. I hated the picking and the crop was rubbish in comparison so this year I had the lad who helps in the garden put up the bean poles and plant all the beans that I had started off inside. Once they were big enough for me to reach, they were the right size for producing pods. I just can't do the weeding but the lad does that. I now have squashes, potatoes and Chard growing in the raised beds and that is just the right height for me to harvest.