However, the broker can be configured to purge inactive destinations. To do so requires using specially configured destination policy entries in combination with the broker attribute: schedulePeriodForDestinationPurge > 0.

Example:

<broker xmlns="http://activemq.apache.org/schema/core" schedulePeriodForDestinationPurge="10000">

  <destinationPolicy>
     <policyMap>
        <policyEntries>
           <policyEntry queue=">" gcInactiveDestinations="true" inactiveTimoutBeforeGC="30000"/>
        </policyEntries>
     </policyMap>
  </destinationPolicy>
      
</broker>

In this example the broker will check for inactive destinations every 10 seconds, as determined by schedulePeriodForDestinationPurge="10000". When a destination purge is triggered the broker will delete any queue that has been empty for longer than inactiveTimoutBeforeGC="30000" milliseconds (default: 60000 milliseconds) and for which gcInactiveDestinations="true" is set on its corresponding destination policy entry.

When a destination is removed the broker will log a message like:

INFO  Queue                          - TEST.QUEUE Inactive for longer than 30000 ms - removing ...