Yes, you are correct! If you breed a bumblebee male with an axanthic female, all your babies will be het for axanthic (they will not express the axanthic gene). If the male was het axanthic and the female was axanthic, you would get a mixture of axanthic and het axanthic babies. In order to get axanthic babies, both parents need to donate an axanthic gene to the baby.
As for the question on genes in general, it doesn't matter if the male or female carries them. If you were to breed a bumblebee male to a normal female, you would have the same chances of getting pastels, spiders, normals, and bumblebees as you would if you breed a pastel to a spider. With co-dom/dom genes, it doesn't matter who carries it! This is why you often time find people invest in 4 or more gene males and will breed them to one or 2 gene (sometimes to normals) females. It's cheaper and you get the same odds. That said, if you want a variety of babies in your clutches, you want to throw as many genes into the mix as you can to get some variable gene combinations.