> >  one cannot breed a pig with wings.  

What I meant was: using conventional breeding methods (sire x dam) it is very unlikely that a pig would ever be born with wings, nor would this birth defect be heritable. But sue me, maybe you could do it. The talking dog was not produced by selective breeding. There, existing behaviors were developed for a specific purpose. 

Perhaps we can train bees to be more hygienic, or hygienic traits could be transferred from one colony to another by adding bees from hygienic lines. But the long term solution is to identify breeders which can reliably confer beneficial traits, so that if I buy a queen, her colony will display those traits. It would be a bonus if her daughter queens also expressed those traits, but it is not essential to success. 

There are many examples of crops that have developed through grafting or hybridization but cannot pass these benefits on. Examples are fruit varieties grafted to hardy rootstocks but which cannot yield hardy offspring, and hybrid animals like mules which are viable but usually sterile. A pig with wings might be created by genetic modification, but I doubt it would fly.

PLB

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