I am using JBoss 6 and was able to setup HornetQ bridge successfully (took a while). The bridge eventfully connects JMS topics on the local (JBoss, source) and remote (WebSphere 8, destination) machines. 

While the bridge connects successfully the only way to make it work (to forward messages to the remote topic) was to go the JBoss JMX console, "stop" the bridge and the "start" the bridge again.

I did some debugging and it seems that "SourceReceiver" from "JMSBridgeImpl" is only added to the "ExecutorService" when the "start" method is called. I was not able to figure out what processes is supposed to call this method during startup of the Bridge so the only remedy was to go the JBoss JMX console to kick it off (not very convenient).

I guess I could come up with some timer to programmatically start the bridge (using JMX) but I am wondering if there is less convoluted way to do that (Am I missing some magic parameter in the jms-bridge-jboss-beans.xml, see attached?). Any insights are appreciated.