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[GenePirate]

I'm with you on this. I think that realizing that pastels and spiders are hets makes it much easier to predict offspring from complex crosses.

Also, I'm not sure what the latest official notation is but I like the upper and lower case letters to show that there are two different "normal" genes involved in this cross; normal for pastel and normal for spider. I would write bumblebee X bumblebee as PpSs X PpSs with the P being the pastel mutant version and p the normal for pastel version and likewise S the spider mutant and s the normal for spider.

Yep, you are correct that a pastel (i.e.) is het for that mutation. It just becomes difficult when someone says "het for pastel" because that implies that two mutated alleles make a pastel. But, a pastel is a het (het for that chromatophore anomaly).
And, yes, in my career I've always done the cap/small letter (i.e., Pp) to indicate one mutated allele for (let's say) pastel and the other unmutated homologous allele (homologous roughly meaning paired or same location). So, for those who need an example, PpHh would be a pastel het for ghost (hypo), and PpHH would be a pastel ghost--you can make up your own letters. It could be helpful for some to insert "n" where there is a normal allele, but for me, it's just too busy. So Randy, Corvid, Dr. Del....good posts. I concur.