In the paper necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence and an explicit expression for the Bayes invariant quadratic unbiased estimate of the linear function of the variance components are presented for the mixed linear model $𝐭=𝐗\beta +ϵ$, $𝐄\left(𝐭\right)=𝐗\beta$, $\mathrm{𝐕𝐚𝐫}\left(𝐭\right)={\mathbf{0}}_{\mathbf{1}}{𝐔}_{\mathbf{1}}+{\mathbf{0}}_{\mathbf{2}}{𝐔}_{\mathbf{2}}+{\mathbf{0}}_{\mathbf{3}}{𝐔}_{\mathbf{3}}$, with three unknown variance components in the normal case. An application to some examples from the analysis of variance is given.

In the paper an explicit expression for the Bayes invariant quadratic unbiased estimate of the linear function of the variance components is presented for the mixed linear model $𝐭=𝐗\beta +ϵ$, $𝐄\left(𝐭\right)=𝐗\beta$, $𝐃\left(𝐭\right)={\mathbf{0}}_{\mathbf{1}}{𝐔}_{\mathbf{1}}+{\mathbf{0}}_{\mathbf{2}}{𝐔}_{\mathbf{2}}$ with the unknown variance componets in the normal case. The matrices ${𝐔}_{\mathbf{1}}$, ${𝐔}_{\mathbf{2}}$ may be singular. Applications to two examples of the analysis of variance are given.