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I found a dozen of seeds in an odl box last winter, and I tried them to germinate but not success. Maybe they were too old.
I grow about half a dozen varieties (2 large seeded colour forms, about five small seeded types) in subtropical Australia. They are my most productive dry bean since they pod late in autumn when my local pod sucking bugs are diminishing in activity. I suspect the crop is better adapted for tropical/subtropical regions since it was domesticated in central america (the large seeded form in the lowlands, and the small seeded in the highlands from separate wild populations).
Like you, I have seen no evidence of spontaneous hybridisation despite growing all the strains together. Next season I plan to hand cross the large and small seeded forms to each other (since the presumable are the most genetically distant from each other, and the colour variations are relatively minor by comparison).
They are highly productive for me, but like most dry beans require a lot of manual labour to harvest and process on a useful scale. At least they are easy to store- almost no weevils touch them once dry, and despite that they are delicious with basic legume preparation (soaking overnight, boiling and skimming scum, pressure cooking).
Lima beans are marginal here. I’ve only tried a few varieties and of those only a few ripen seeds. Yields are low. Given that other summer legumes (common beans, cowpeas etc.) do well here I don’t waste my time with them.
Two of my gardening friends have had a real hard time woth them this year. Like low germination, even though they were replanted 3 times. And not much production.
I have never grown them myself, but the gentleman in question is a seasoned Lima bean grower and aficionado.
It’s been a very strange year
The more variable your climate is the longer you have to grow a crop before you really know how marginal it is under your conditions. In Australia we naturally have ~10 year cycles from dry to wet, so you need to grow a crop for at least 5 years to get a preliminary idea how it behaves at the ordinary extremes. It might be that other parts of the world that historically had more predictable climates might be becoming more like Australia over time.
We have a lot of native bee species here, along with ample honeybees, but most legumes evolved to fit specific species of bees. I suspect we dont have the right kind here to do the job. I dont mind since it means I can control crossing a bit more, even though it means a bit of fiddling every few years. Even common honeybees vary a lot in their behaviour depending on the local bee culture (Darwin observed his local honeybees learning tricks from observing bumble bees bypassing the intended pollination mechanism of flowers by drilling holes in the base).
I suspect this is a common phenomenon- a crop has to adapt toward self pollination as its range of cultivation expands and it leaves its original specialised pollinator species behind.
For me, Lima beans produced about the same amount of seed as went into the ground. Eventually I donated the last of my seed to another grower.
Sadly, no. I grew some last year, and they were delicious, and I want to grow more. Sadly, I planted 20 seeds and got 20 seeds back from three plants, so that wasn’t a great return. On the other hand, I ate a few as shelly beans, and they were delicious – so much better than dried. So I really want to get them working.
It’s also worth noting that the three surviving plants all went into the ground two months before the last frost, and they shrugged off a lot of mild frosts and the beginning and end of the season without protection. All the common beans died. I don’t know if it was just that variety (Fordhook 242), or if lima beans in general are a bit less cold sensitive than common beans in general, but either way, that was a great advantage.
Sadly, the seeds I saved from those plants went under deep mulch in spring this year, and the roly polies ate all of them, just like all of my bean seeds that went under any mulch this year. 
Lesson learned – apparently beans and peas have to be germinated in bare soil here, because if there’s any moisture at all at the top of the soil, roly polies will eat every seed the instant it germinates.
The only thing that has worked for me is starting them indoors and transplanting in mid-May, which is frowned upon but seems to work perfectly well. This year I’m also growing butter beans (same species, but smaller beans), which have a short enough DTM to be direct sowed. Just started harvesting them; they’re very prolific and super tasty.
Thank you for reminding me that butter beans and lima beans are the same species. That sounds familiar like I might have read it at some point but I would never have remembered on my own.
Last year I had good results with lima beans, so I put out the seed from last year saved crop plus some seed I got at the nearby seed rack. It did terrible this year. Butter beans are a traditional variety around here, maybe that is the way I can bridge the gap between the radically different performances on the two years. I probably was going to avoid the species until you reminded me of that.
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I thoroughly support you in this goal! 
I’m in zone 5b/6a, at 42 degrees latitude, so season length may be more of an issue here. If you direct sow lima beans here and wait for them to mature, the season is over and you still don’t have any beans. None of the farmers around here grow lima beans because of that. I failed with many different varieties, even supposedly short-season varieties, until I decided to “break the rules” and start them indoors. I’ve never tried saving the seeds, though maybe someday I’ll grow enough to do that.
Consider trying Joseph’s Promiscuous beans! They were about a month earlier than the mix of (every single one of the) heirlooms I grew next to them. Hopefully there will be a good supply this year.
Wow! I’ll try them if I can find them!
I find limas don’t set well for me when it is hot and humid. My best crops have been when we have long mild falls and it is a race to first frost. Some years they have been great and other years I don’t get much to show for the effort.