With beveled shapes I have not been able to edit them unless I remove the bevel first and then convert to editable shapes, then reapply the bevel.

I don't always create shapes thinking about what I'd like to do with them later.

However, if you convert to shapes, joining them subtracts size whereas adding them makes the shape editable but it rather becomes a tiled bitmap of what you had before you began editing your shape.

In fact no matter when you choose add shapes to a beveled object, even if it had been already converted before to editable shapes, you can pull it apart to a tiled bitmap.

I have wondered when making bitmap fills because any of my vector bevels appeared as well in the list of available bitmap fills.

X1 behaves about the same way.