An MDB is a consumer of messages. Consumers buffer messages locally (default size = 200 if I remember rightly - see userguide for details). So if you create a consumer and there are say 1000 messages on the queue, then the first 200 messages will be taken off the queue and buffered in the consumer. Therefore you won't see them when you browse - since they're no longer on the queue. If you have < 200 messages then you won't see any until you close the consumer (or the MDB). This is expected behaviour. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4049462#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...