I've had Apache2::Reload working (you did use Apache2::Reload didn't you?). My setup looked like this:

LoadModule perl_module  modules/mod_perl.so
LoadModule apreq_module modules/mod_apreq2.so
<Perl>
    #!/usr/bin/perl

    use lib '/path/to/my/source/checkout/lib';
    # various use statements...
</Perl>
PerlModule      Apache2::Reload
PerlInitHandler Apache2::Reload
PerlSetVar      ReloadModules   "Base::* OtherBase::*"
[download]

Phil