Hi Tony,
Thanks for such a quick response. Regarding the two items.
loadonce
Got it. I will need to loop through my resultset and validate there are children for the category.
hoverrows
First off – thanks for the bit about where to place the qtip code, works like a charm. qtip is now rendering the tips over each of the embedded images for which I have included the specific class.
Second – I am still getting the jqgrid tip. I even attempted to set the default to false in the grid.base.js portion of the min file – and removed the mouseover code which performed the bind. Still getting the tip? I tested this against a basic non treegrid just to make sure and found the same behaviour. One think I did notice is, in IE when the browser does not have focus, I don't get the jqgrid. When it does have focus I do get the tip. With FireFox I get the tip each time.
Here is a small image which demonstrates the issue. Is it possible, like the loadonce issue, I an not quite grasping the intent?

Thanks again!
Brian