Ah! I did find this gem which seems to be the most concrete bit of advice: http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=92496 anonymous wrote : If you need to be cluster safe, hold the reference to the entity bean inside a stateful session bean (in any version of Seam) or inside a JavaBean Seam component that implements Mutable (in Seam 1.1). But checking the hierarchy for EntityHome, I see MutableController implements Mutable. Clearly something's missing, but what? I'd be fine switching to stateful session beans if the ultimate answer is "EntityHomes don't work." View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4110958#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...