diff --git a/docs/advanced/Middleware.md b/docs/advanced/Middleware.md
index fe51ff6493..f77aa88273 100644
--- a/docs/advanced/Middleware.md
+++ b/docs/advanced/Middleware.md
@@ -268,12 +268,16 @@ The implementation of [`applyMiddleware()`](../api/applyMiddleware.md) that ship
 
 * It only exposes a subset of the [store API](../api/Store.md) to the middleware: [`dispatch(action)`](../api/Store.md#dispatch) and [`getState()`](../api/Store.md#getState).
 
-* It does a bit of trickery to make sure that if you call `store.dispatch(action)` from your middleware instead of `next(action)`, the action will actually travel the whole middleware chain again, including the current middleware. This is useful for asynchronous middleware, as we have seen [previously](AsyncActions.md).
+* It does a bit of trickery to make sure that if you call `store.dispatch(action)` from your middleware instead of `next(action)`, the action will actually travel the whole middleware chain again, including the current middleware. This is useful for asynchronous middleware, as we have seen [previously](AsyncActions.md). There is one caveat when calling `dispatch` during setup, described below.
 
 * To ensure that you may only apply middleware once, it operates on `createStore()` rather than on `store` itself. Instead of `(store, middlewares) => store`, its signature is `(...middlewares) => (createStore) => createStore`.
 
 Because it is cumbersome to apply functions to `createStore()` before using it, `createStore()` accepts an optional last argument to specify such functions.
 
+#### Caveat: Dispatching During Setup
+
+While `applyMiddleware` executes and sets up your middleware, the `store.dispatch` function will point to the vanilla version provided by `createStore`. Dispatching would result in no other middleware being applied. If you are expecting an interaction with another middleware during setup, you will probably be disappointed. Because of this unexpected behavior, `applyMiddleware` will throw an error if you try to dispatch an action before the set up completes. Instead, you should either communicate directly with that other middleware via a common object (for an API-calling middleware, this may be your API client object) or waiting until after the middleware is constructed with a callback. 
+
 ### The Final Approach
 
 Given this middleware we just wrote:
diff --git a/src/applyMiddleware.js b/src/applyMiddleware.js
index 3cf08841b6..a35098914f 100644
--- a/src/applyMiddleware.js
+++ b/src/applyMiddleware.js
@@ -19,7 +19,12 @@ import compose from './compose'
 export default function applyMiddleware(...middlewares) {
   return (createStore) => (reducer, preloadedState, enhancer) => {
     const store = createStore(reducer, preloadedState, enhancer)
-    let dispatch = store.dispatch
+    let dispatch = () => {
+      throw new Error(
+        `Dispatching while constructing your middleware is not allowed. ` +
+        `Other middleware would not be applied to this dispatch.`
+      )
+    }
     let chain = []
 
     const middlewareAPI = {
diff --git a/test/applyMiddleware.spec.js b/test/applyMiddleware.spec.js
index c733c093b8..84e7c79df6 100644
--- a/test/applyMiddleware.spec.js
+++ b/test/applyMiddleware.spec.js
@@ -4,6 +4,17 @@ import { addTodo, addTodoAsync, addTodoIfEmpty } from './helpers/actionCreators'
 import { thunk } from './helpers/middleware'
 
 describe('applyMiddleware', () => {
+  it('warns when dispatching during middleware setup', () => {
+    function dispatchingMiddleware(store) {
+      store.dispatch(addTodo('Dont dispatch in middleware setup'))
+      return next => action => next(action)
+    }
+
+    expect(() =>
+      applyMiddleware(dispatchingMiddleware)(createStore)(reducers.todos)
+    ).toThrow()
+  })
+
   it('wraps dispatch method with middleware once', () => {
     function test(spyOnMethods) {
       return methods => {