Another question: my mana bean farm is producing only 3 of the same beans. When I look at the planted beans, WAILA shows the bean stalk as changing. Am I doing something wrong? Bug or feature?
You have to breed mana beans together to get different aspects by putting the 2 base aspect beans next to each other and once grown they'll form the new aspect .Makes farming them a royal pain, rather use wisps and a grinder(absolutely hate when mods require mob farms, horrible for servers)
Once you have bred a mana bean, it should be a permanant thing, unless you breed or use away your last bean. That said, using them for later tier Aspects is a bit of a hassle. (The deepest i've gone is Spiritus). Personally I find the most useful mana beans to be things that are a hassle to get from items. For example Vintium, Auraum and Victus.
A word of warning, don't break mana beans unless they fully grown.