Abstract: An apparatus, system, and method are disclosed for autonomically managing multiple queues in a data processing system. A receiver module receives a message that specifies a computing task. A time stamp module appends a time stamp recording a time the message is received to the message. An assignment module assigns the message to a local queue if the local queue has less than a specified threshold number of messages else assign the message to a global queue. A processor module processes a specified initial number of next messages from the local queue and process a next message from the local queue if a time stamp of the local queue next message is less than a time stamp of a last message processed from the global queue else processes the next message from the global queue.