the genetics of the parents and grandparents will greatly affect the outcome. If the ancestry looks nice, the offspring is much more likely to look nice.
But you also have to ask: Do you breed an awesome looking pastel to an awesome looking spider, for a 25% chance to hit a bee, which will then hopefully look REALLY awesome?
Or do you breed a nice looking killer bee (super pastel spider) to a nice looking pewter (cinnamon pastel)? Ok chances to hit just a bee with only pastel+spider get quite slim, and unless you are breeding over multiple generations and have your own lines the quality of these bees will be hard to predict.
Both approaches produce awesome-looking snakes that can be stunningly beautiful. And both are completely justified, one approach creates the best picture-perfect bees and the other approach puts out new combos and decent BPs with 3 or more genes.
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