Long before Kraft Dinner boxes carried hockey cards, another Canadian food brand was already deep into its own hockey card tradition. Beehive hockey photos, issued by the St. Lawrence Starch Company from 1934 to 1968, form one of the longest-running promotional card programs in North American sports history.
Unlike a typical trading card set packed in wax paper, Beehive photos arrived by mail. Collectors sent in proof-of-purchase labels from the company's products and received an oversized black-and-white player photo in return, a process that shaped nearly every aspect of how the set works today.
The promotion took its name from Bee Hive Corn Syrup, the company's most popular product and the label most often submitted for redemption, even though the photos were not exclusively tied to that single item. Over 34 years, more than 1,000 unique player photos were issued across three distinct design eras.
This guide covers the full history of the Beehive promotion, from its 1934 origins through its 1968 end, and why it remains one of the most significant vintage hockey collectibles in Canada.
The St. Lawrence Starch Company, based in Port Credit, Ontario, launched the photo promotion in 1934 as a way to drive product sales through a mail-in redemption offer. Collectors sent in a proof-of-purchase label and received a photo of an active NHL player by return mail.
Jefferson Burdick's American Card Catalog later classified the set as FC6, a food-issue designation that reflects how the promotion sat outside the traditional gum-and-wax-pack card industry of the era.
Collectors could often choose which active player they wanted a photo of, within the limits of what the company had available at the time. That selection mechanic meant popular stars ran short more often than lesser-known players, shaping rarity in a way pack-based sets never do.
This distribution method is fundamentally different from a modern trading card set, where a collector opens a random pack and hopes for a specific card. With Beehive, the collector had some direct influence over which player photo arrived in the mail.
Each photo featured a black-and-white player image mounted on a larger colored card mat, generally in the neighborhood of five by seven inches, considerably larger than a standard trading card. Early photos used red, white or off-white, and blue mat backgrounds.
The photos themselves were basic by design: a player portrait, printed name, and little else. That simplicity is part of their lasting appeal, since the format has an unmistakable vintage character no modern reprint fully replicates.
The full run splits into three collector-recognized eras. Group I covers 1934 through the early 1940s, Group II spans the postwar years into the early 1960s with a larger script style, and Group III, running through the mid-to-late 1960s, introduced a distinctive wood-grain border design.
Each group has its own checklist, design quirks, and collecting challenges, which is why serious Beehive collectors typically treat them as three related but separate projects rather than one continuous set.
Because the promotion ran across more than three decades, its checklist spans an extraordinary range of NHL history, from Original Six legends of the 1930s and 40s through stars still active in the late 1960s. Hall of Famers across that entire span appear somewhere in the Beehive checklist.
Two of the era's biggest stars had a personal connection to the promotion as collectors themselves before their playing careers made them subjects of it, a detail covered in more depth in this pillar's player-spotlight guides.
With more than 1,000 unique photos issued across three groups and three decades, assembling a truly complete Beehive run is an almost impossible undertaking. Survival rates vary enormously by group and player, and no documented collector has ever claimed a complete set.
That scale is part of what makes Beehive collecting so open-ended. A collector can spend years working through even a single group without ever running out of new photos to chase. That openness is part of what keeps the format compelling decades after it ended, since new collectors can still make meaningful discoveries within a checklist this large.
The St. Lawrence Starch Company of Port Credit, Ontario, from 1934 to 1968.
By mailing in a proof-of-purchase label and choosing an available player.
More than 1,000 across the full 34-year run.
Group I (1934-1943), Group II (1944-1963), and Group III (1964-1967).
No documented collector has ever claimed a complete run across all three groups.
Beehive photos need different care than a standard hockey card, starting with proper handling and storage. A sturdy collector album is a solid starting point for organizing photos as you begin building a Beehive collection of your own.
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