synchronous jms receive not working

I have two queues - requestQueue and replyQueue. I send a JMS message through the requestQueue from a seam web application to a MDB. The MDB sends a reply message through the replyQueue. I can see increased message count in jboss admin console. Now (in another request, thus another transaction) I try to receive the reply message synchronously - using MessageConsumer.receive, receive(timeout) or receiveNoWait. I set no selector. The methods never return the message, one timeouts, one never returns and the other returns null. I can see increased number of message listeners in the admin console. The message is also seen in the database (postgres). I've tried both postgres and default hsqldb - no difference.