The estimations of variance components for the unbalanced one way random effects model when the underlying distributions are not necessarily normal are considered. ANOVA, REML, ML, MIVQUE, and MINQE estimators are compared with respect to their mean squared errors and biases through a simulation study. Explicit, computable expressions with no matrix inversion necessary are given for these estimators. An efficient rule to provide a prior guess of MINQE is given. Our results indicate that the efficiency of MINQE is excellent for arbitrary underlying distribution in the sense of MSE even in the presence of nontrivial bias. Also, MINQE is a worthwhile improvement over other estimators when kurtosis of underlying distributions become large 1.