I bought 5000 BITB in two lots of 2500 back in March and February, spending around $38 total, IIRC. It's now worth $16 and I haven't received a single sprout in all that time, despite that the wallet has been synced and running more or less continuously on a laptop I set up specifically for running wallets. So, this experiment has played out exactly as I expected based on the amount of money I was willing to put into it... 
the Bear market. OUCH. My mining rigs have been off for months but Beans are still sprouting strong and generating satoshis daily. 5000 beans really isn't enough to make a micrometeorite worth of impact. But I would like to drop one nugget of information on you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olEo8pSSPiE
Sure, the interval between sprouts with just 5k beans is quite extended, but I should have received at least one sprout by now (it's been 9 months). I may buy another 15k beans to bring the sprouting interval down to around 2 months, but no way am I going to spend more than this token amount - another $18, basically - on a project I otherwise never viewed as anything but an interesting experiment.