Do you use hibernate  3.x? Bulk operations were introduced in hibernate
3.

I used hibernate  3.0.5 for my application  and I used
your suggested HQL Statement
Update Bill b set  b.status=1 where b.id > 1000

But unfortunately it doesn't work! I want to emphasize
again that I use hibernate under hibnerate3's
HibernateSupport of Springframework. So I ask you to
test it really and at least attach a snip of code
(just a little that required) and then promote it as
your solution if it is possible!

If you use hibernate  3 ,you must run following statment  as update statment:

Query query=hibernateSession.query("Update Bill b set  b.status=? where b.id > ?");
query.setInteger(1);
query.setInteger(1000);
query.list();

I have used hibernate  3.0 bulk  delete as follows and it works fine.

          int deletedAttachments = session.createQuery(
              "delete Attachment where fkFrmTrackingId= :trackingId and filename= :filename").
              setLong("trackingId", trackingId).
              setString("filename", filename).
              executeUpdate();