diff --git a/tests/testthat/setup.R b/tests/testthat/setup.R
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..bc409a0b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tests/testthat/setup.R
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+suppressWarnings(requireNamespace("RSQLite", quietly = TRUE))
diff --git a/tests/testthat/test-table-insert.R b/tests/testthat/test-table-insert.R
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..d579bea9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tests/testthat/test-table-insert.R
@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+test_that("appending with zero columns throws a dedicated error (#313)", {
+  skip_if_not_installed("RSQLite")
+
+  db <- dbConnect(RSQLite::SQLite(), ":memory:")
+  on.exit(dbDisconnect(db))
+
+  dbExecute(db, "create table T(n integer primary key)")
+  expect_error(dbAppendTable(db, "T", data.frame()), "column")
+})
+
+test_that("appending with zero columns throws a dedicated error (#336)", {
+  skip_if_not_installed("RSQLite")
+
+  library(RSQLite)
+  a <- data.frame(sep = c(1, 2, 3))
+  con <- dbConnect(SQLite())
+  on.exit(dbDisconnect(con))
+
+  dbWriteTable(con, "a", a)
+  expect_equal(dbReadTable(con, "a"), a)
+})