HDF5ExtError when creating python pandas HDF file
### Error

Started to get this error recently.

```
tables.exceptions.HDF5ExtError: HDF5 error back trace

  File "H5A.c", line 634, in H5Awrite
    not an attribute

End of HDF5 error back trace

Can't set attribute 'levels' in node:
 /tensor (Group) ''.
Closing remaining open files:tensor.h5...done
```
#### Code Sample, a copy-pastable example if possible

**mydata** is a giant tuple `(('word1', 'link', 'word2', int), (...),`

```
pdf = pd.DataFrame.from_records(mydata)
pdf.columns = ['word0', 'link', 'word1', 'counts']
h5file = pd.HDFStore(h5fname, 'a', complevel=9, complib='blosc')
h5file.append("tensor", pdf,
              data_columns=['word0', 'link', 'word1'],
              nan_rep='_!NaN_',
              min_itemsize={'word0': 55, 'link': 15, 'word1': 55})
h5file.close()
```
#### Expected Output

tensor.h5 file
#### output of `pd.show_versions()`

```
INSTALLED VERSIONS
------------------
commit: None
python: 2.7.11.final.0
python-bits: 64
OS: Linux
OS-release: 4.3.6-1-MANJARO
machine: x86_64
processor: 
byteorder: little
LC_ALL: None
LANG: en_US.UTF-8

pandas: 0.18.0
nose: 1.3.7
pip: 8.1.1
setuptools: 20.2.2
Cython: 0.24
numpy: 1.11.0
scipy: 0.17.0
statsmodels: None
xarray: None
IPython: 4.2.0
sphinx: 1.3.6
patsy: None
dateutil: 2.5.3
pytz: 2016.4
blosc: None
bottleneck: 1.0.0
tables: 3.2.2
numexpr: 2.5.2
matplotlib: 1.5.1
openpyxl: None
xlrd: None
xlwt: None
xlsxwriter: None
lxml: None
bs4: 4.4.1
html5lib: 0.9999999
httplib2: 0.9.2
apiclient: None
sqlalchemy: 1.0.12
pymysql: None
psycopg2: None
jinja2: 2.8
boto: None
```
##### Corresponding stackoverflow issue.

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/37142173/hdf5exterror-when-creating-python-pandas-hdf-file](url)
