As the replication process is a costly operation, you can optimise this behaviour by optionally implementing the org.jboss.ejb3.cache.Optimized interface in your bean class:

public interface Optimized
{
   boolean isModified();
}

Before replicating your bean, the container will check whether your bean implements the Optimized interface. If this is the case, the container calls the isModified() method and will only replicate the bean when the method returns true. If the bean has not been modified (or not enough to require replication, depending on your own preferences), you can return false and replication would not occur.