Q of Q Group By

this query runs successfully

<cfquery name="TotalWebSurvey1" dbtype="query">
select answers answers1, col theanswer, qnumber, qtext
from AnswerCount1, questions
where qnum = qnumber
and col <> '[No Answer Entered]'
<!--- add some 0 quanity rows in case a certain answer is not selected by anyone --->
union
select 0 answers1, atext theanswer, qnum qnumber, qtext
from QuestionsAnswers
</cfquery>

The field qnumber is an integer (I think) and has values of 1,2, or 3.

this query also runs successfully

<cfquery name="x" dbtype="query">
select qnumber
from TotalWebSurvey1
</cfquery>

But this one,

<cfquery name="x" dbtype="query">
select qnumber, count(qnumber) cc
from TotalWebSurvey1
group by qnumber
</cfquery>

Gives this error:

Error casting an object of type to an incompatible type. This usually indicates a programming error in Java, although it could also mean you have tried to use a foreign object in a different way than it was designed.

Am I doing something stupid or is Cold Fusion not playing nicely?  If it's relevent, this is how the qnumber field gets generated.

<cfhttp url="something.csv" name="WebSurvey1"></cfhttp>
<!--- each column represents a  question and each row represents a person.  Get the answer counts.  --->
<cfquery name="WebSurvey" dbtype="query">
select * from WebSurvey1 where q1 <> ''
</cfquery>
<cfquery name="AnswerCount1" dbtype="query">
<cfloop from="1" to="3" index="i">
select #i# qNumber, q#i# col, count(*) answers
from websurvey
group by qNumber, col
union
</cfloop>
select 0 qnumber, '' col, 0 answers
from websurvey
where 1 = 2
</cfquery>