Kbear messing up taskbar

I am seeing problems when using Kbear on SuSE9.2 (fresh install). When I load Kbear, the KDE taskbar will crowd together thw tasks in the taskbar, and open up a lot of in between items on the "System Tray". Once I close Kbear, the proper spacing will return, but not immediately. Has anyone else seen this, and is there something I can do to fix the issue? (I'm new to Linux, and especially SuSE/KDE, so I may get my terms incorrect.) Thanks eric